Brian Wilson: Gettin' In Over My Head

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

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Flawed genius fails to deliver much other than cliches from his back pages Former Beach Boy Wilson is rightly considered a pop genius for his complex and textured music in the late 60s which peaked with the Pet Sounds album in '66 and the Good Vibrations single.

Wilson famously went into a musical slump and became slightly psycho after he heard the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's in '67 and abandoned his intended masterpiece, the album Smile, tracks of which have leaked out over the years. Wilson has picked himself up over the past decade or so, recorded a few albums - all sounding time-locked - and has said Smile will come out by the end of the year. He has performed it to great acclaim in London.

Meantime here, six years after his last outing, Gettin' in Over My Head feels like the stop-gap: a guest-heavy collection (Sir Elton, Sir Paul, Mr Clapton), some songs dating back to the early 90s, others with former collaborators from BBoys and beyond days, Andy Paley and Van Dyke Parks.

All the Wilson/BBoys signatures are here: the layered vocal harmonies, that distinctive voice, chord changes he should have patented in '63, and there's even a track with the disembodied voice of his late brother Carl. The lyrics are (mostly) still innocently teenage, too. In fact, most of what's here sounds like variations on the very familiar: How Could We Still Be Dancing is plod-rock with Elton, and songs like You've Touched Me and the musically cliched Desert Drive sound like BB album tracks from the early 70s. That's not exactly a compliment.

The title track is lovely, City Blues with Clapton breaks out of the familiar (although it is somewhat swamped by overwrought guitar) and the sentimental A Friend Like You with Macca isn't as cloying as the title suggests.

Wilson's music and lyrics remain (mostly) breezily optimistic which is nice given how screwed up he was, but overall this is a rhinestone passing as a diamond from someone you respect but whose offerings here are considerably less than exciting or innovative.

It's '66 once more from Brian, and that's like deja-vu all over again.

Maybe we wait for Smile and hope it lives up to expectation. It might have a job. Not many albums are overdue by 37 years.