The Smile That Returned To Us

Back when file sharing wasn't even imagined, in the days of dial-up and floppy disks, the internet was the primary resource of information and speculation about the lost Beach Boys album Smile. 

Prior(e) to that, we only had occasional mentions in the rock press and Dominic Priore's essential bible for Smile fanatics [left - Ed.], then hard to find, a great fat paste-up fanzine, a labor of love we p(ri)ored over, mining it to aid us complete the lost masterpiece. Because that's what we attempted, on whatever cassette decks we had, using what source material we had, bootlegs and official releases. Editing was crude, but we all had our own ideas as to track choice and running order, and mailed cassettes to other obsessives while we waited for mp3 to be invented.

It was a mess. But fun. And the vision of what the album might have been didn't fade. More recordings surfaced, the picture became clearer, and the clamor for an official archival release got loud enough for Brian to be persuaded to record a new version, highly anticipated. Brian Wilson Presents Smile was a weirdly unsatisfying experience, and although impeccably performed seemed even further away from the Real Thing than our own clumsy cut-ups. The quality of the vocals had much do with it; no other combination of voices sounds like the Beach Boys, where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. They took harmonies to places they'd never been before or since, and the mix of timbre is unique. The original tapes are super-saturated with non-reproducible atmosphere; the spirit of the times, beautiful and funny and strange. I caught Presents on tour, and the audience teared up, sending a great warm wave of love out to Brian Wilson. One of the most memorable concerts I ever attended, still sends chills down my spine. So much love. But it didn't realise the dream of the lost album, it didn't deliver completion, serving mainly as a celebration of Brian Wilson and a reminder of what could have been.

The eventual box set of the original Smile sessions, although providing much new material at high quality, was another missed opportunity. In the absence of Brian going back to the tapes, nobody else stepped up to assemble the elements in a form that did them justice, as a record. Nobody risked going out on an artistic limb and saying, hey, how about this? Any number of Beach Boys experts and archivists could have. But no. The material was curated with museum-grade respect but zero imagination, a glass case displaying the shards of a shattered crown. At least we had a wealth of more pieces to work with. Perhaps too many. My own enthusiasm waned at this point. I had well-made fan attempts I listened to more than Presents - which I never listen to - and thought that was as close as I'd get.

And then, three years ago, an internet blogger quietly gave us both stereo and mono versions of the album that immediately rendered all previous reconstructions and assemblages obsolete. Soniclovenoize (for it was he) came up with the best imaginable recreation of the Real Thing, in stunning sound quality. Crucially, he limited it to vinyl album length, which given the wealth of disconnected material out there is a major achievement. No (thank God) fifteen minute versions of Heroes & Villains. Just a suite of songs - and what songs! - interlaced with the batshit sound collages you either enjoy or (more commonly, because you're not on drugs) dismiss. But even the segments obviously lacking vocals sound right - oddly whole, like the Venus de Milo.

Smile is such an old, old story that a resolution is no longer expected. There have been so many attempts at telling it that SLN's version was, I think, received as just another playlist to be filed alongside the others. Yet it does something the others don't - it takes that risk, plays a little, creates a little, and in giving us not quite what we expected gives us what we needed all along - an album. The album.

My only nitpick was his replacing the first minute of the stereo Heroes & Villains with a mono edit, because he preferred the quality of the vocals. He may have a point, but it seems a musical solecism that Wilson would never have made. So I replaced his hybrid with the original single, the song that opened my ears and blew my mind back in '66. Both versions of the album are (to use an overused term) essential. Smile, with all its confusions and contradictions, has, at last, been returned to us.

I hear the sound of a gentle word

On the wind that lifts her perfume through the air