Near Wild Heaven: Smiley Smile: The Truly Lost Masterpiece
From The Smile Shop
Near Wild Heaven: Smiley Smile: The Truly Lost Masterpiece, by Paul Casey
Note from Chuck: this essay contains "adult" language. You have been cautioned.
It is all a sterile acceptance now.
The firm belief in the awful fucking chaos of living with nothing to offer any conceivable societal group or organization. They're not taking membership anymore, that boat has careened off to the side of the canal and exploded in a haze of circumstantial humping and masturbation. But shit one for us, those left on the bank without a means for escape from this roving band of cave people, shouting! SHOUTING! ALWAYS FUCKING SHOUTING! all the time nothing but conflicted segregation and laughing laughing laughing pain, pain, pain, pain, pain. all of this for that? There is nothing to trade now, nothing of worth, absolutely nothing. Jesus but what to do but to suck it up and accept it all, merely accept this waking hell, bleeding profusely from eyes from not being able to even exist in a sleeping state peacefully anymore, those times now troubled with the anxieties and uncertainties of the day... the day a time for growth and harmony and family outings to the park with a picnic and a basket and the thoughts of spiritual rejuvenation or something equally redundant. For we are the people that will not ever realize the mistakes, not really, for we are proud of the mistakes, they are ALL we hold on to now. The only thing that separates us from death is the knowledge that we were wronged.. in some way, neither lightly nor incredible in force, but just enough to sedate and to paralyze. To create the greatest of hangovers, 10 years and counting! What a joke we have become, but ME most of all, me that cannot attain the simplest of release from this tacky prison. Nobody is here now to stop me, because we have known for many years that there really is NOBODY to count on, nobody that will step in, there are only descending stairwells leading lower and lower to the chasm that breeds this constant belief. What is there to hope for? If everything to hope for is false, and if not false, utterly unattainable.. if the things that you believe in are nothing more than falsehoods, illusions of a savior, a savior oh god!let him come down and save me... I don't care, anyone, anyone but NOW, NOW, please now... I can't do this anymore, this was too much to ask of me... what counts???
Nothing seems to... nothing counts... nothing ever counts for anything, effort is nothing without results, but where are the results??? Where? Is there anyone out there that will take pity on this poor wretched soul and lay unto me some kind of peace?? That is all that I ever wanted, peace, silence, no thoughts just peace. There is music in the next room, floating on the stale closed air, through the wall, with pounding force it comes, in waves again and again, with the sounds of a church bleeding on the floor, sad music, but never depressing, this is the last functioning thought in despair, the place to go to try to salvage something, the last buffer before final descent into the grim darkness. But be close and listen, listen, as he has told you before, listen carefully, the quiet explosions happening under the surface, far under in a damp room, with only a few instruments of beauty, the main one being- THE VOICE- hear the damage but the persistence at the bottom rung of the ladder, the long crawl back to happiness. PLOD, PLOD, PLOD. The song breezes through and out of the environment with the speed of a locomotion, which is probably a very appropriate thing indeed, considering the lyrical connections to such images. It is only three minutes and one half in length but the journey is one of immense spiritual expression, it is exhausting to listen to. The relief brought at certain places brings such joy,
"My Children Were Raised You Know They Suddenly Rise
They Started Slow, Long Ago, Head To Toe,
Healthy Wealthy And Wise."
My soul always hears this before I do, it has some deeper connection. Under thirty seconds and the places that this little tiny segment of a song brings me always makes me cry, the hope that these lines personify has never been so bittersweet than on this album. Music to be around and to be inside of, music that comes and ends quickly but never truly leaves, it lives under your skin and takes on another life. The grace and sadness of the inevitable tread from autumn to winter are all over this thing, which is appropriate, of course. The way the harpsichord melds with the voices, sums up some strange immediate image of the ideal childhood, it's astonishing, it always seems like you know this bit of music from some distant memory, that it is embedded in you from birth, and Brian is again tapping into this dormant emotional experience through music. Such a visceral and reactive song. It is combative and passive at the same time, the verses endowed with that strange laid back stationary movement, the VOICE is energetic but the body is no longer willing. This instills the album with that classic bittersweet tagline and selling point, for it is a failure, but it is a mighty one. Failures are sometimes more beautiful than successes anyway. I could listen to this song forever, and for very long stretches of time it has taken up REPEAT on my CD player, over and over again through the night, just waiting for those little moments that make up this fractured whole. The album is like someone breathing in and out very slowly and without much thought to how the expression comes across, it does not bother the music whether you like it or not, it is the complete opposite of the needy brilliance of Brian's pop catalogue, it exists in it's own space and takes you places on it's own terms. The narrative structure is there, but very sparse and without a linear thread, for the way that the songs come is indeed stream of consciousness, the thoughts that come out of Brian's head are indeed important and artistic ones but they are disjointed and without the same cohesive sobriety of much of the SMiLE work. That is not to say that this detracts in any way from the experience, far from it, the atmosphere has never been stronger on a Beach Boys album, it is like entering a dream where things crop up at different places but everything is perfect when experienced in the dream state. It is drunk (or stoned) logic, the things make perfect sense when perceived from a certain state of mind, the flow yet again an amazing accomplishment in of itself, the ghosts and shadows left over from the SMiLE framework remain in many ways, Heroes and Villains ties in with the theme of the two songs that proceed it, both in Vegetables and Fall Breaks and Back To Winter, the harsh cold air of the Wild West is prominent, the desire to return to a simpler living in Vegetables is seen perhaps not explicitly in Heroes but is indeed implied by the tone and My Children Were Raised section. But this music is not to be thought of in the same way that the SMiLE music is dissected and analyzed, which is perhaps it's true (and only) failing, is that this is not SMiLE, at least not in the way people were expecting, it is definitely different. But different does not equal worse, not when the way that most people paint this album, in a lazy without care type of brush, is really quite off the mark. At least in terms of how the finished product can be appreciated, for it is full and beautiful and wholly on a par with Pet Sounds, or SMiLE or any of Brian's other work, it just doesn't seem like it is at first. Some things really stick out in my mind though when thinking about the album, Wind Chimes is just so god damn amazingly creepy and utterly unlike anything that they either did before or after, it is a different interpretation of the song but to this day I still prefer this version to any of the Smile segments, as I do with Wonderful, the little touches to the songs, the Whispering Winds fade out, the sounds of Children playing buried in the mix on Wonderful, the out of this dreary workaday retching globe lead vocals from Carl, the altered "WIND CHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMES... ." backing vocals. Also I don't know how anyone can listen to With Me Tonight and not see it as a thing of perfection... . I mean that song completely fills a room and takes it over, there is nothing like that song played really early out in the back garden to annoy the neighbors... nothing, because it is so pure, as is Little Pad, so little goes into the productions but the overall effect is anything but under produced. They are whole living breathing pictorial music landscapes carved with the greatest of skill, perhaps as a throw off, perhaps as an effort to get the record company some fresh product, perhaps as a come down off of the 'failure' of SMiLE, but the aural evidence available at most good record shops, is so powerful to the contrary of these statements that it matters not one bloomin' wit.
Take all those moments and add them together, when he actually makes you feel close to sleep and listening to those Wind Chimes tinkling off into the distance... you are IN the song... . he does this so many times on the album when he transports you to these places, with what??? An organ, some percussion and the Voices of himself and The Beach Boys... surely this should be seen as a success in the face of convention rather than a failure to wield larger and more complicated tools.. he managed to turn out an album that holds up better now than it did then, it is still being appreciated by lots of people as a unique, strange and oddly overlooked masterpiece and it will be for some time.
Smiley Smile has it all, you just need to know when to stop looking.
