Dennis Wilson - "Brother - The Music Of A Beach Boy"

Appreciating Dennis Wilson's work in the context of the Beach Boys is like (some suitable metaphor here, please). It's scattered far and wide and deep. But gathered together, as this collection shows, it's a far more impressive œuvre [Fr. - egg - Ed.] than you might have thought. Or at least I might have thought. There's a hefty double album of material that's astonishingly consistent in terms of quality.

Swell new cover!

For Brian, there was nothing more important than music. Nothing. Ever. But Dennis liked getting out there (in every sense) and doing stuff (in every sense). He was, famously, the only surfer in the group. Given the choice of (and excuse me, ladies) draining down into a teenage groupie or sweating over another take in the studio, he listened to his dick. It's surprising he found the time to produce such a body of work in such a short time, and of such artistic value, when there were so many, uh, distractions.

His talent seemed to emerge fully formed with the deceptively slight Little Bird, and there's not a song here he doesn't invest heart and soul into, or remains unrealised. From the delicate and subtle (was there ever a song as evocative as Steamboat in anybody's canon?) to the overpoweringly emotional, he's an artist without peer. Nobody else wrote like this or sounded like this. He let his demons out in his music as in his life. It's unfortunate that he encouraged them, because they never let you alone, and you die unhappy. But his art is the whole man - romantic, blatantly sexual, and occasionally terrifying - and the world is richer for it, and for him.