The Smiley Smile Message Board

I Know Pet Sounds Is The Regarded As The Best BB Album But Is Smile An Equal Piece Of Art? Or Better?

They're not very alike.
Pet Sounds is more emotional for me, more direct, more of a perfect album. Not a weak moment on that album. I recognize myself in the very personal lyrics.
Smile is like an entire world of its own. It's more special, more experimental, more psychotic than emotional. Very exciting lyrics.
It's like walking inside Brian's disturbingly active imagination, while Pet Sounds is more about love, loss, emotions. Can't really say I like one of them more than the other, but Pet Sounds has always been a PERFECT album for me.

I agree with all these points and had made some in another thread recently. The only exception I would make on the emotional issue is the "childhood" suite. The entire section always feels so emotional to me (and one of the reasons that Smile beats out Sgt. Pepper, by the way. Even with "She's Leaving Home" and "A Day In The Life," that album lacks anything that connects to people on such a deep level.)

Perfect is such a subjective term, cause everyone has there own definition. I'd have to say, personally, they are both perfect in different ways. Even though, I connect more, overall, with the music from Pet Sounds, I love the experimental, psychedelic feel of Smile. And, the closest I've ever had to a song touching me in the "Surf's Up" does is "Caroline, No." Its a tough choice, there.

Pet Sounds is a better collection of songs but Smile is more of a piece of art. The songs on Smile are also more complex and ambitious.

I really like this statement.

Pet Sounds means something different to each of us - because it's easily relatable to our own little worlds. Whereas with SMiLE, Brian decides to create a whole new world full of Cowboys and Indians, Hawaiian tribes, boys and girls, and God.

Perhaps this is exactly what Brian was trying to do the whole time: a concept album that just creates a new world (what fundamental properties make up the world? The elements). The Beatles created a band in Sgt. Pepper. Brian Wilson tries to create an entire world with his music.

Thats an awesome way to look at it, Brian was unhappy with the world in Pet sounds, so he decided to create a new world in SMiLE.

I would just like to know if Linett had the same tools and equipment that he used to mix/edit/record SMiLE in 2011 at his disposal back in 1996 to do the Pet Sounds mixes, if Pet Sounds would sound any better than it already is. The audio technology jumps ahead so fast - just wonder if he did Pet Sounds today if it would sound even better.

I'm thinking the technology hasn't drastically changed enough to justify going back and attempting it again to get it even better. Bottom line, it's still analog to digital, right? Is it still 24 bit? I haven't yet compared the technical notes in the SMiLE set to the technical data in Pet Sounds. Anybody know if there's been dramatic improvements - enough to want to re-visit Pet Sounds? I know there's time (and money) constraints, but Pet Sounds was MUCH easier to make back then since they had most of the multi-tracks at hand.  

According to the PS box set liner notes, the multitracks were transferred "using a custom 24-bit converter." Mark has said that much of the catalog is at 24/88.2 through Apogee converters. Fidelity-wise, I don't think a new transfer would make a huge difference.

That said, mixes you might be able to improve upon today would be Mike's bridge vocal on "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and Brian's outro vocal on "God Only Knows." Not just because we have better extraction tools now, but also because of the higher quality mono master that was only found about five years ago.

I'd say you've nailed it.

Nice interpretation on SMiLE!

I think the issue in 1996 was that they were just plain missing the multi-track with that bridge on it. Are you saying that they have subsequently found it or that they now have the better capability of "flying it in" and the edit would sound cleaner now?

Are you being touched on a deep level by the MUSIC or the LYRICS?  Normally people are responding emotional to the lyric content.  The childhood suite doesn't mean anything to me on a personal level.  I will say that She's Leaving Home is a much deeper song to me than anything on SMiLE (probably because I didn't need a Masters Degree in Poetry to figure out the meaning and Paul's lyrics are very simple to follow) ) though I think musicially a song like Wonderful is more impressive.  I personally do not really get into lyrics, and certainly - don't attempt to analyze them.  Being a musician myself, I have always been more about the melody, the structure/arrangement of the song, the performance, the solos, the harmonies, with the lyrics coming last.  

That being said, Pet Sounds vs. SMiLE?  Totally different animals.  Uncomparable, and there's no reason to choose one over the other.  You play the one you are in the mood for!  I will say that I usually listen to individual tracks more from Pet Sounds, but I tend to listen to sections of SMiLE.

all of u have good points ok how about musically, what do u prefer? pet sounds or smile?

Both.  But like the funky dude above said, they're essentially two different animals.

I don't see how it's possible to put it up against Pet Sounds or any other album, personally.  As wonderful as The Smile Sessions are,  it's just not a complete album.  I'm trying to see it as what it is rather than what I know it should be.   There's a reason it's called The SMiLE Sessions and not just SMiLE. 

The Pet Sounds song lyrics are more "accessible". The Smile song lyrics are more avant-garde. Even the finished Smile songs (Heroes, Surf's Up, Cabinessence, Wonderful) are more intricate both musically and lyrically.

To me, Pet Sounds and Smile are apples and oranges 

I wasn't clear enough, but yeah, the latter. What I meant to say: not only could you improve Mike's fly-in, but you could probably put Brian back on "God Only Knows" with very few side effects.

u have a point :) i guess i prefer pet sounds. child is the father of the man, look, holidays, and i love to say dada arent even finished and they sound magnificent. but i wish they had the vocals :/

Well it's art and this is subjective but for me I enjoy Pet Sounds as a whole much more than SMiLE.  It's important to note that I'm talking about the original intent of SMiLE which was never meant to include Good Vibrations.  Though SMiLE has some amazing music on it I find the lyrics and the world created not as interesting or moving as on Pet Sounds though I do listen to the original version of Wonderful often. At times it seems SMiLE is the sound of a man's mind breaking and not in a good way. This makes it hard for me to listen to it straight through.

Pet Sounds is disciplined effort by Brian at the height of his faculties working with some of the greatest studio musicians in the world.  There's not a single superfluous note on the whole record. In the end it's an unfair comparison. Pet Sounds is a collection of songs not a rock opera or audio movie or songs with an interlocking story.
As far as Brian's talent its great to go back and see how advanced he was at arranging jazz/pop style harmonies and to hear it develop over time. He mastered these things really early on in their recording history and there's many early songs that could have worked seamlessly on Pet Sounds but wouldn't have gelled on SMiLE.  Thanks for the thought provoking question. :-)

Ouch.  This is the toughest for me but since (Smile was never properly finished and) the question concerns The Smile Sessions, that makes it much easier and I can go with Pet Sounds with a totally clear conscience :)

I don't think so...if anything it might sound worse due to more options for trickery. Audio quality hasn't really improved since the seventies ...editing and effects, sure, but not audio quality. Plenty of people around who still think you can't get any better than 1 inch four track running at 15ips.

If they'd had the same gear now as in '96, they probably would have done that digital thing where they managed to isolate Mikes vocal from the bridge of 'wouldn't it be nice', but it'd sound all phasey and weird...like the fly-ins they've done on the new mixes.

I had written out something that was very flowery and probably overly long.

Suffice to say:  PET SOUNDS makes me reflect on the past and all that comes with it.  SMiLE makes me thing of the future and all of its possibilities.

TSS, without any second of hesitation. It's outright gnarly. :smokin

Hi Newguy How Are You The Today? Pet Sounds Vs $m1L3 Is A Good The Thread Idea.

 ;D

I think that Pet Sounds is a more consistent listen, but the highs on Smile are the greatest creative works by anyone ever IMO.

IJWMFTT makes me feel like no other song makes me feel. For that alone, Pet Sounds will be ahead for me. I listen more to Smile, I find it more interesting from a creative point of view, but man that IJWMFTT. It might be highest on my 'how the f*** can you write a song like that' list. It deserves it too.

I love the "building a new world" idea.

Pet Sounds is consistently amazing.
TSS has moments that are near orgasmic.

Smile is better music, pet sounds is a better album.

There are moments on Pet Sounds that gives me the chills ..to think that mostly one human came up with these songs/ideas and had other musicians create the music for it. (This was in his head..it's completely mind blowing.)

Personally I would rate the Smile Sessions above Pet Sounds, but Pet Sounds is still a mind blowing album. The thing that inches the Smile Sessions ahead for me is the fact that it's an attempt to go further with the music, not just repeat the techniques that worked so well on Pet Sounds. You know, a lot of lesser artists might have said 'that's it, I've perfected my technique and can't do this any better...' but Brian was always looking at ways to expand what he was doing. So you get this wonderful collection of abstract music that is so wonderfully archaic and complex yet simple that it just blows everything else away in my mind. I mean, once you've painted a dozen technically perfect landscapes and protraits, what's left to do other than explore abstract styles... cubism, fauvism and so forth.

The approach of recording these tiny little sections of music and stitching them together, along with all the contrasting room sounds and slight variance in tempo, is so marvellously abstract; it created that extra dimension to the music that Brian was looking for to expand his music beyond what he'd already done. But then there's the fact that the arranging of those sections is so fantastic too. I mean, a lot of the songs on Smile (with a few exceptions) are really quite simple in their chord structure, but it's the way he arranged them that was so marvellous. Layer in those amazing harmonies and... I just don't know how anyone can ever top that. Something, for me, that makes it even more magical, is the fact that it's imperfect... it's incomplete... it's a truly abandoned piece of art, the tapes on the shelves for decades, accumulating mystique, becoming the stuff of legend. When I listen to the Smile Sessions that's a big part of the magic for me.

Again, Pet Sounds is amazing, I love it for it's perfection. It's a total mastery of the art of pop music executed by Brian. But in terms of bold artistic endeavour Smile is the winner to me.

I love SMiLE but to me it does not have the emotion of PS. PS is the pinnacle to my mind.

SMiLE is brilliant even unfinished but my impression is Brian wasn't making it from the heart like he had PS, he was making it from the head to impress and that eventually was not satisfying to him and he dumped most of it.

Surfs Up.

But yeah I agree there are certain songs that are engineered to the point that they probably lost some raw emotion as a result.

To me Brian gives an emotional rendering in SU and the words are clever [maybe too] and poetic but to me too much from the head and it adds up to less heart than PS.

I love 'em both equally - beat that!