antipopper

Just when this year couldn’t get any bleaker, we’ve just discovered that M has terminal cancer. It sounds a bit off to go out in the wake of news like this, but I’ve actually established a rhythm of going to see performances that create planes of emotional consistency in the middle of life and death crises, so I went to see Brian Wilson at the Sydney Opera House without feeling like a ghoul.

A few points about the non-Smile related activity of the evening:

• Brian’s slightly overlong “unplugged” opening set seemed to be trying too hard to establish a carefree, “authentic” counterweight to the hyper-orchestrated music that was to follow;

• The arrangements of the early, “sun and fun” songs had an intricate, glassy clarity that I hadn’t noticed when I saw him last;

• “Add Some Music To Your Day” from 1970′s Sunflower has really become a unexpected triumph over the last few years– it’s about a trillion times better than the album version.

The problem with first half was that it really lacked the heartbreak evident in the last tour — no “Til I Die”, no “Warmth of the Sun” and hardly anything from Pet Sounds. The mood seemed a little too well adjusted and upbeat, and ironically, Brian seemed withdrawn and stage-managed. (And in case anyone’s wondering, no, he’s not some mummified puppet that the Wondermints are trotting out for display — from the behind-the-scenes footage I’ve seen, he really does have an unusual amount of wide-ranging musical control. He’s just really shy. And the onstage patter from the last tour was a little too rehearsed, anyway.)

But perhaps this strange emotional mutedness was the price to pay for the utter, mindblowing joy of hearing Smile — that holy grail of rock lore — performed live in its entirety. It truly is masterpiece of quaint Americana, offered in unexpectedly affecting cointerpont. Stuff that sounds fragmented in bootleg form really vibrates well in this new, reconstructed context, whose musical flavour really is just as Van-Dyke-Parksian as it is Brian’s: songs like “Child is the Father of the Man” and “Vege-Tables” segue in seamlessly with newly orchestrated musical glue, while “Do You Like Worms” has achiveved a new kind of driving majesty. And yes, the string players really do put on firefighter’s helmets for “Fire”/”Mrs O’Leary’s Cow”. It’s goofy.

But it’s undoubtedly “Heroes and Villians” and “Surf’s Up” that form the backbone. This band was made for such dizzying arrangements — perhaps they should forget about the rock credentials and just present Smile by itself as a suite. And here, it’s Brian’s voice which is a revelation. The croak of a couple of years ago is gone, and with some help from vocal doubles, he’s holding melodies well. (Hey, he used to double track himself on lead all the time, so no sniping.) Again, the further we get from a yelpy rock context, the better he performs. But I wish Carl were still here.

Perhaps Brian was on the way to creating a whole different path in pop music complexity, a far more resonant, post-psychedelic alternative to prog, in which the limits of the three-minute pop song are transgressed, but without disdain, its “popness” continually renewed. I guess we’ll never know, but seeing Brian do it live is the closest I’ll come to finding out. And Van Dyke Park’s bittersweet images of fading civilizations seemed appropriate in the current context. Columnated ruins domino.