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Those who surmised that Brian Wilson’s Smile project was too far ahead of its time when the unfinished album was shelved back in 67 may have been right. A more musically mature Wilson and co-conspirator Van Dyke Parks have returned to the studio with a new group of talented musicians to piece together the Smile puzzle, and 37 years later it finally makes sense! Instead of a grand-scale experiment in eccentric self-indulgence, Smile turns out to be a deeply considered reflection on what it means to be an American, split into a three-movement psych-symphony that manages to be both whimsically absurd and surprisingly profound. Brian Wilson and company demonstrate how it’s done at Massey Hall Wednesday (October 6).
