I recently received Brian Wilson's "Smile" album as a gift, and all I can say is that it's brilliant in every way possible. The songwriting, the instrumentation, the melodies, the seamless ties from song to song, and the production are all top notch.

The history of that album is pretty amazing as well. The Cliff Notes history (or so I've read) is that Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were basically becoming really amazing pop song writers and were one of the only bands that could really compete with the Beatles' proficiency at writing great pop songs. Brian Wilson supposedly heard the Beatles' "Revolver" (or it may have been "Rubber Soul") and was so impressed with the level of songwriting that he wanted to match its brilliance. So he came up with "Pet Sounds," which was a brilliant album in it's own right. He was sure that he had his masterpiece written when the Beatles soon came out with "Sgt. Pepper's" and he was completely blown away and basically just shot up his hands in defeat.

That defeat, fuelled by inner personal demons, led him on the path of a nervous breakdown. On the path of his nervous breakdown, he continued to write songs for a new album. The album went unfinished, and until this year, existed only in concept and half-recorded demos.

Well he recently went back to those half recorded and half written songs and gave it the Brian Wilson production quality that existed for "Pet Sounds" and released the album under the name "Smile."

The album, as I understand it, was recorded by Brian Wilson and his touring band, which is basically a Beach Boys sounding band with slightly better singers than the Beach Boys had. Most of the songs have lyrics from a child's book about a farm, and most of the songs revolve around that "concept."

If there are drawbacks to the album, is that it lacks the authenticity of being a Beach Boys album, as well as it sounds a tad too "modern" in my eyes. Imagine if John Lennon and Paul McCartney had come up with this great album concept in the sixties, but one of them didn't get around to recording it until the nineties or beyond. The songs are all really strong, but it doesn't "sound" like a sixties album. The songs sound sixties for sure, but the production quality puts it into this whole other category. It's hard to explain. Think of someone like Ringo Starr re-recording "With a Little Help From My Friends" with today's recording tools, but trying to make it sound sixites still.

For the most part, Brian Wilson succeeds at making it sound pretty darn authentic to the sixties. I'm actually pretty amazed that he is so skilled as a producer, that he was able to make some of the songs sound like authentic sixties songs. It's hard to describe.

The album is brilliantly written and produced though. It's a damn shame that Brian Wilson had the nervous breakdown because if the Beach Boys had released this album the way it is now, back in the sixties, I feel that it would rank right up there with "Sgt. Peppers." Maybe it still does anyway. I may not rank it in the same category as "Sgt. Peppers" because the individual songs don't stand out as much the Beatles work from that album.

But conceptually, it's a stronger album than "Sgt. Peppers." From a conceptual standpoint, I think that Brian Wilson had a clearer idea of what he wanted the album to be, and was albe to pull it together in a better way. "Sgt. Peppers" started out conceptual, but ended up just being a new string of songs that don't necessarily flow from one to another. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" doesn't really have that much in common with "When I'm 64," except for maybe the "vibe" of the era. Whereas, all the songs on "Smile" feed off one another, and have lines of music that appear throughout the album. You'll hear a strain of "Good Vibrations" throughout other tracks on the album.

The album isn't for everyone. It took me a few listens to really get into the album. But now that I'm in it, I can't stop listening to it. I initially just tried skipping from song to song, but this album doesn't hold up really well when I did that. There aren't just individual songs that you can fast forward to, and have them sound the way they would sound if you listened to that song in the context of the album. There are songs that stand out individually, but it's only when you listen to big portions of the album uninterrupted that you trully gain a sense of how great an album it really is.

Recommendation? If you like "Pet Sounds," I can almost guarantee that you'll like this album a lot.