Our Back Pages Dept. - Sunset Album Redux

Four Or Five Guy© Tooner left a request for this to be re-upped, and rather than bury it in the sand down there in the comments, I'm bringing it to your attention should you of, like, been in th' shower first time around (unlikely for skunky Pmac, who rinses off a paltry once a week - yeeuch).

[Swell art at left. Click for bigly - Ed.]

I'm also copy-pasting screed so you don't gots to trek away from the comfort zone of this page, ya lazy-ass bum. You can pick your feet in Poughkeepsie while you read it. You gots nuthin' better to do right now and and don't kid yerself.

That Brian Wilson survived the sixties at all is surprising. That he made this music over half a century after the Beach Boys' first album is astonishing. It's evidence that his muse, although taking a well-deserved break from time to time, never left him. No Pressure Radio - credited here to Brian Wilson And The Beach Boys - is an assemblage of songs from That's Why God Made The Radio and No Pier Pressure. I've omitted all the celebrity "feat." team-ups, the up-beat numbers, anything vaguely quirky. And Mike Love, who whines: "I was disappointed with the album's direction. I was denied much songwriting input." Just one of the reasons the album came out as swell as it did, Mike! We cordially urge Mr. Love to get on his motorbike and accelerate up his own ass, forever.

What we're left with is an old man, toes in the sand at sunset, lost in the warmth of the sun. A suite, a hymnal, as full of melody as the beach is full of sand. The subtle quotes from early Beach Boy hits are pitched absolutely right and part of the DNA. The participation of David Marks, Al Jardine, Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar is inspired. Carl and Dennis are here in spirit. Bruce Johnston probably wore shorts at the mic, and good for him.

I can't offhand think of another artist who better expressed the euphoria of youth and lived long enough to sing the melancholy of old age so affectingly. Although never a surfer, he made us all feel like we were catching that wave - the giddy rush of sheer teenage fun never sounded so real. And here we are, a lifetime down the line. He's not bitter, angry, or even depressed. He can still write and sing the upbeat stuff (which the world apparently has little use for), but his heart is here, in the acceptance of old age and the world that lives only in glowing memory. And that's what memory can be, as old people know - lit by the warmth of an inner sun.

It's not an album he could ever have released himself - as the Eternal Teenager, he'd get bored with the lack of rock n' roll - but it shows his beautiful soul as transparently as anything he ever did. Fourteen songs, forty-four minutes. Proper album. God, this is beautiful.

Thank you Brian, for everything.