Brian Wilson at the Aotea Centre

Brian Wilson in concert at the Aotea Centre. Picture / Geoff Dale

There are forever times when you'll see some pop artist on stage trying to relocate or replicate his or her younger more inspired self. Usually, just going through the motions keeps their audience happy.

But this was quite something else. This took that notion and turned it on its head. This was Brian Wilson, the brain of the Beach Boys - who were more than just a surf band, they were a major intersection point in American pop - both reclaiming his legacy and having tribute paid to it by the dozen-plus musicians who helped him finish Smile, the album he shelved in 1967 .

The album's songs, finally released a few months ago, made up the core of the show. It's not often the reading of a commercial suicide note nearly 40 years after it was written could be so entertaining.

But there it was - Wilson's oddball pop masterpiece in all its tangential parts.

Live, his "teenage symphony to God" was a sonic kaleidoscope of American music, the pop equivalent of say Norman Rockwell having suddenly started painting abstracts.

It was gorgeous, amusing and frequently baffling. And through it all, there at his keyboard and his lyric autocue screens sat Wilson, a picture of brow-furrowed concentration as one oddball number folded into another before climaxing on Good Vibrations.

It would have been enough for Wilson and his backers to get half that song's stacked-to-heaven arrangement. But no, it was all there, theremin solo and everything and it did the heart good to hear it so big and bold.

At the same time it was just a little different and that was the curiously brilliant thing about the entire show. Wilson didn't quite sound like the twentysomething guy of the Beach Boys heyday.

Some high notes were too high, others were a little wobbly or off-mic. But he still sang like he was still so in love with the songs and those many girls - Californian or otherwise - that feature in them.

And so was his band. His backers weren't just vast (a mix of musicians many drawn from L.A. band the Wondermints as well as a Swedish string and brass section) and flexible (most sang those harmonies with gorgeous precision in between switching instruments) they were brilliantly sympathetic to the material.

It wasn't all Smile. The show started with an acoustic set which largely focussed on the early pages of the Wilson song book before turning up the power on Sloop John B and heading to half-time on the likes of Get Around and God Only Knows.

After the Smile centrepiece, it found an even higher gear, rattling through every Beach Boys hit that hadn't been covered earlier with Wilson and band doing whatever is the complete opposite of going through the motions.

Unforgetttable.