Sziasztok rajongók. A Guardian fikázza Brian Wilson új lemezét, és sajnos kénytelen vagyok egyetértően bólogatni, eléggé gyengus.




Brian Wilson, Gettin' In Over My Head
(Rhino/East West)

By page 361 of Brian Wilson's autobiography, Wouldn't It Be Nice, the reader feels unflappable. You have learned of his physically abusive father. You have discovered that a drug-addled and mentally ill Wilson once encouraged his pre-pubescent daughters to take heroin. You have read about the delectable Mike Love, who, early in the book, assembles his fellow Beach Boys in a lavatory to proudly show off a gigantic turd freshly voided from his bowels. You feel immune to shock.
And yet, on page 361, Wilson still manages to bring the reader up short. He worries that his music compares unfavourably with that of Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon. Worst of all, it does not offer "the sophistication of Sting". That phrase delivers a horrifying jolt. The composer of Good Vibrations and God Only Knows has somehow come to the conclusion that his work is inferior to that of the man who wrote De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.
Forget the stuff about building a sandpit in his living room: this is categorical proof that Brian Wilson is completely mad.

Wilson subsequently disowned Wouldn't It Be Nice, claiming that it was written by his horrendous former psychiatrist Gene Landy. However, you are reminded of his troubling views on contemporary music by his third solo album, Gettin' In Over My Head. Few artists can match Wilson's level of influence. Famous musicians flocked to the recent live performances of his legendary 1960s albums Pet Sounds and Smile. He could collaborate with any number of groundbreaking young artists who owe him a debt, with potentially fascinating results.

Instead, Gettin' In Over My Head opens with Elton John, huffing his way through a song called How Could We Still Be Dancin'? Later on, you are treated to a guitar solo by Eric Clapton and a song co-written with David Foster. If the latter name seems unrecognisable, then his oeuvre is all too familiar: he should be held responsible for Peter Cetera's Glory of Love, St Elmo's Fire by John Parr and many singles by Celine Dion. A sliver of comfort can be taken from the fact that you are spared the sophistication of Sting: slated to appear, he proved mercifully unavailable.

Foster's presence highlights a problem even more pressing than musical conservatism. Wilson has been suffering from writer's block for almost a decade. The team behind Gettin' In Over My Head do their best to conceal the fact. They pad lacklustre songs with touches that evoke Wilson's heyday - drums that mimic the rumble of 1960s LA sessioneer Hal Blaine, echoing basslines that recall Pet Sounds, a choral opening in the style of Smile's Our Prayer. They dredge up material from Sweet Insanity, an album Wilson made with Gene Landy in 1991 that was rejected by his then record company.
They haven't quite been reduced to using Sweet Insanity's deeply regrettable excursion into rap, Smart Girls, but the pickings are slim none the less.

Wilson's previous solo efforts contained moments when he appeared to rediscover the inspiration that fuelled the Beach Boys' peerless mid-1960s recordings: his eponymous 1988 album had Love and Mercy, 1996's Imagination offered the lovely Lay Down Burden. You wait in vain for something similar here. Saturday Morning In the City comes closest - a song so childlike and naive it becomes slightly unsettling - while Make a Wish soars into life, but is quickly grounded by Wilson's voice.

Wilson has sounded croaky since the mid-1970s, but here he also sounds slurred and halting, as if his efforts are being hampered by an ill-fitting set of dentures and a faulty autocue. More disturbing is his emotional tone.
Anyone who has noted that Wilson's face now seems to arrange itself naturally into an expression of horrified bewilderment - suggesting he isn't entirely sure what is going on, but is pretty certain he doesn't like it - might be troubled to learn that on Gettin' In Over My Head, he sings the way he looks.

You too might sound horrified and bewildered if you were lumbered with lyrics like The Waltz, by Wilson's Smile collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Back in the mid-1960s, Parks turned his concerns about Vietnam into the stunning imagery of Surf's Up. The Waltz, however, features this disheartening couplet: "She up and said 'I'm a dancer - don't tell me, you are a Cancer'."
Wilson still sounds horrified and bewildered when singing the harmless, ostensibly carefree Desert Drive or Fairy Tale. The effect is, at best, disconcerting.

At worst, it reiterates an uncomfortable question first raised during the Pet Sounds and Smile shows: is this really the best thing for Brian Wilson?
Then, it was drowned out by the emotion of the event and the sheer loveliness of the music he performed, but that doesn't happen here. Everyone wants Brian Wilson's story to have a happy ending. The worst thing about Gettin' In Over My Head - far worse than the mediocre songs and the MOR guest appearances - is that it doesn't sound terribly happy.

2/5

Alexis Petridis
The Guardian
Friday June 11, 2004