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| From | Andrew Hickey <stealthmunchkin@gmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: Over his head? |
| Date | Wed, 29 Sep 2004 18:56:24 +0100 |
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> Just curious, what is so bad about Brian's "Gettin' In Over My Head"? I
> haven't heard it yet, and am wondering what the criticism is about...
Personally I *love* half of it, and loathe the other half. To give you
some idea (because it's an album that has *DEFINITELY* caused mixed
feelings) here's a full review I wrote of it for my blog. As it was
done for that, there's strong language and opinions I wouldn't
normally post to a mailing list...
A lot of people thought when reading this that I disliked the album -
I think it's excellent, and it's one of the best of the year, but it
is badly flawed, and the flaws are easier to write about...
Gettin' In Over My Head is Brian Wilson's third solo album of original
material, released in June 2004. Encased in a horrible Peter Blake
cover, the music inside, while patchy, is some of Wilson's best in
decades.
First, a bit of history - between his two 'proper' solo albums, 1988's
Brian Wilson and 1998's Imagination, Brian Wilson recorded material
for two unreleased albums. The first was a finished album, called
Sweet Insanity, which had moments of utter splendor (Rainbow Eyes and
Don't Let Her Know She's An Angel among others) but was slathered with
synthesisers,had terrible lyrics courtesy of 'psychiatrist' Eugene
Landy, and contained such atrocities as Smart Girls, Brian's attempt
at rap ("My name is Brian and I'm the man/I write hit songs with a
wave of my hand" , "Wouldn't it be nice if PhDs/Were stroking me with
hypotheses" , "God only knows where I'd be/Without smart girls, hip
hop and harmony") which bore more than a passing resemblance to the
theme tune from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.
The second effort was a series of collaborations with Andy Paley
towards a projected new Beach Boys album. These songs were some of
Wilson's best in decades, but it was very debatable how much
involvement he had in them - many sounded very much like Paley's own
earlier attempts at Brian Wilson pastiche.
While the songs from these sessions were more or less ignored during
the making of Imagination, this new album consists almost entirely of
thes songs, reworked and in many cases with new lyrics.
A quick summary - this is Brian's best solo album by far, and the
first one to sound like a Brian Wilson album, but it is definitely
flawed. The vocals are uniformly awful, and the lyrics are dreck. But
the arrangements...
How Can We Still Be Dancing, the opening song, is a duet with Elton
John. Many fanboys love the a capella, multi-tracked Brian opening
(except where I specifically mention otherwise, Brian does all the
lead and backing vocals), but the fact is that this, and Brian's
screeching, slurred, vocals, stop this from being an obvious radio
hit. The lyrics are stupid, but it's a nice mid-tempo rocker with good
vocals from John (who I normally loathe), although his pronunciation
of 'how can we' as 'hah!' is... idiosyncratic, a nice horn riff, and
good boogie piano, also from John.
Soul Searchin' is even better, a really excellent track dating from
the Paley sessions. This is the much-bootlegged demo recording with
some overdubs (primarily vibraphone and saxophone). Mostly written by
Paley, this is a soul/doo-wop flavoured song, with a lead vocal from
Carl Wilson (taken from an abortive Beach Boys session). There's not
much to say about it except that it's really, REALLY good, and makes
one wish the Beach Boys album it was demoed for had been finished.
You Touched Me opens with more off-key a capella harmonising, before
turning into a track reminiscent of The Beach Boys' Christmas Album -
the vocal melody in the verses is very similar to Merry Christmas
Baby, although the chord sequence and chorus/middle eight melody come
from a mid-80s demo called Turning Point. The lyrics to this, by Steve
Kalinich, are horrible, awful, excrescent, tenth-rate, puerile,
prosaic, dreck - and this is coming from someone trying to be nice to
him because he's a friend of my good friend Susan. It's not so much
that the sentiments could come from a Hallmark card, although they
could, but more that the expression of them is so clunky and
clodhopping. Someone please, PLEASE tell this man that there's a
difference between scansion and merely counting syllables. Or better,
break all his fingers and sew his mouth up so he can never commit
lyric again....
Melodically it's nice though, and the arrangement is *gorgeous*. It's
mostly based around Paul Mertens' bass harmonica and baritone sax,
with some nice touches from Darian Sahanaja on vibraphone, but what
really makes this track is Mertens' string arrangements. He arranged
most of the strings on this album, and on the live Smile tour, and he
did a magnificent job - there's a pre-rock, European style to the
violin parts that makes me think of Stephane Grappelli, a style I
would never have associated with Brian Wilson's music (although
strangely it sounds VERY like Van Dyke Parks) but which works
perfectly. Mertens' taste is sometimes questionable as a sax/flute
player - he veers too much towards lounge music for my tastes,
although he does a great honk - but as a string arranger he adds an
element to Wilson's music that has been sorely missing.
Wilson's vocals on this are also his best in many years. He's singing
at the top of his current range, but without screeching or straining -
it's just confident, strong singing, other than the rather poor intro.
Gettin' In Over My Head, the title track, is another song from the
Paley sessions, and is the most obviously Pet Sounds-esque song on the
album. The lyrics ("I try to be strong but that isn't so easy for me/I
wish I could figure what this thing will turn out to be") deliberately
echo the themes of that album, and the music, apart from a rather
incongruous AOR lead guitar line, goes in the same direction. A
vibraphone line reminiscent of that from Til I Die, bass harmonica,
bubbling top end bass, lead harmonica, clip-clop percussion
(thankfully this album sees a return to Wilson's use of percussion as
an interesting instrument in itself, rather than the AOR drum kits of
the previous albums), this is simply gorgeous. The vocals are slightly
weak, but not poor, just a little slurred, and the lyrics are the best
on the album - actually MAKING SENSE!
City Blues, on the other hand, is a godawful train wreck of a song.
Dating from the 1981 'Cocaine Sessions', it's amazing Brian managed to
remember what little bit of a song there is here that long, given that
it's mostly just an excuse for a clumping riff, but this manages to
take a non-song and make it worse with the addition of 80s
synthesiser, a squealing guitar by Eric Clapton and alternately
screeched and slurred vocals. Probyn Gregory and Paul Mertens do their
best on the horns to redeem it, but this sounds like a less-good
version of Hot Shot City by David Hasselhoff, something I'd never have
believed possible...
Desert Drive is a MUCH better variation on the same theme. A fun
12-bar car song based very loosely on the riff from Salt Lake City,
and mostly by Paley, this features Brian's band on backing vocals,
including some very silly falsetto (in a good way) from Jeff Foskett.
It's slightly overlong (the middle eight is repeated to give the
excuse for extra solos which aren't really necessary), and the vocals
again aren't especially good, but this is FUN, and any rock song that
references Wayne Newton is A Good Thing.
A Friend Like You is another horror though. Supposedly a 'duet' with
Paul McCartney, it sounds like the song wasn't finished when McCartney
came in, as he only takes the title line as a solo line, sings low
harmony to Wilson on the choruses, and scats some ooh-ooh backing
vocals in the second verse, even though it was obviously *written* as
a duet - there are parts clearly in different ranges. McCartney also
apparently played the horrible Adult Contemporary acoustic guitar part
on this. But musically the song is actually OK, although hardly great
and with some really horrible vocals from Wilson, if it weren't for
the appaling, dreadful, horrible, disgusting, very bad Kalinich
lyrics. Kalinich should be shot for his crimes against the English
language. "A friend like you, a friend like you/You're so patient and
so thoughtful/A friend like you, a friend like you/You're so tender
and so precious" would be banal enough were it not for the fact that
the lyrics simply
DO NOT SCAN. COUNTING SYLLABLES IS NOT THE SAME AS GETTING THE FUCKING
STRESSES RIGHT! THIS MAN HAS BEEN WRITING LYRICS AND POETRY FOR FORTY
FUCKING YEARS, SOMEONE PLEASE PLEASE TELL HIM THIS NOW!!!!
Ahem.
Thank you - I feel much better now.
But the lyrics aren't just technically bad, they're simply banal,
stupid and pointless, which also goes for Make A Wish, a song
originally recorded for Sweet Insanity and rejected for a benefit
album for the Make A Wish foundation. Quite a nice track is scuppered
irredeemably by Brian's own lyrics this time, which not only have the
same problem of having the stresses in the wrong place, but are also
of the generic-protest-about-not-very-much style one associates with
Phil Collins at his most annoying. REALLY, Brian? You honestly think
that 'finding cures for all disease' and 'love replacing hate and
fear' are good ideas? I never would have thought of that without you
telling me. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to
your newsletter.
Rainbow Eyes, the second Sweet Insanity outtake, is much, much, much,
much better. A lovely, simple song, like a nursery rhyme in the best
way, the production on the bridge and chorus is perhaps a tad
bombastic, but what one takes away from this is simply the gorgeous
melody and the childlike, but not childish, lyrics. This also has some
of the best vocals on the album, at least on the single tracked stuff
(the multi-tracked harmonies on this album are generally the worst
parts, amplifying mistakes that in a single-tracked vocal go
unnoticed. This album really suffers from the lack of other
vocalists), and some nice Mertens string parts (criminally low in the
mix). One tiny niggle is the change of the word 'insanity' to
'conspiracy' and 'psychedelic' to 'everlasting', both changes
presumably at the request of Wilson's wife, but anyone coming to these
songs fresh rather than after a decade of listening to the bootlegs
wouldn't notice that.
Saturday Morning In The City is a song dating from 1988 but recorded
in 1996, apart from a couple of recent overdubs. A very silly, fun
little song in the tradition of The Beach Boys Love You (or even more
so, Adult Child), the very childish lyrics ("Saturday morning in the
city, oh yes it's saturday morning in the city/Next door they're
having a garage sale/Rover is barking now OK here's the mail") covers
up an astonishing amount of musical invention for a song that only
lasts 2 minutes 59 seconds. This is a mini-suite with at least three
totally different melodies, and all sorts of instrumental touches that
would take weeks to list, little honking and squeaking things all
over. I love it.
Fairy Tale on the other hand is horrible. Co-credited to David Foster
, because Chicago released a different version with different lyrics,
but totally written by Wilson, this started as a Sweet Insanity
outtake called Save The Day, and was bad enough on that album, with
lyrics similar to those of Make A Wish, all about how the power of
love can save the day. But this is worse, with DREADFUL lyrics about
knights and dragons (dragons which can apparently cast spells). It
sounds like the theme to an 80s children's film like The Dark Crystal
or something. And it's FAR too long at 5:34. It's a shame, because
there's the germ of a good melody in here somewhere, under the poor
production and dreadful lyrics.
Don't Let Her Know She's An Angel is another song from Sweet Insanity,
and one of the best songs he's ever written. Unfortunately Brian has
NEVER managed to get this right - this is the fourth attempt to record
it, each time with different verse lyrics and a different arrangement
- which is a shame, because the Platonic Ideal version of this I have
in my head, a composite of the best moments from all four versions, is
simply gorgeous. Even as it is though, this is a lovely song, albeit
badly produced, and the chorus ("Don't let her know she's an
angel/Don't let her know that you see/Don't let her know that she's
touching me/I'm scared that she'll want to go free") sums up the theme
of all his best songs. I still think the best single version is the
demo recording from 1988, with just Brian at the piano, but finally
having this gorgeous, beautiful song out even in a flawed version
still makes the album essential for this alone.
The Waltz is a collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, based on an old
Sweet Insanity song called Let's Stick Together (which featured "Weird
Al" Yankovic on accordion), the lyrics to this read horribly ("She had
a body you'd kill for/You hoped that she'd take the pill for") but
when sung they work wonderfully. It's amazing how VDP lyrics make a
song SOUND like a Van Dyke Parks song, no matter who wrote the music.
But actually this is as much Paul Mertens' track as Wilson's - his
Parksian string arrangements and bass harmonica parts drive this
track. This is a love it or hate it track - I love it and I think
anyone who likes Van Dyke Parks will love it as well. It's a
wonderful, witty, melodic track redolent of a bygone age, and a
fitting close to a horribly flawed album with moments of sublime
beauty
--
Andrew Hickey and Trevor DeMont headline
International Pop Overthrow, the Cavern, Liverpool
Monday October 25
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