|
 After
Many Years
By
Shawn Stone
Brian
Wilson
Smile
(Nonesuch)
On the long list of things one thought would never happen,
the completion of the lost Beach Boys album Smile was
near the top. In 1966, genius-boy Brian Wilson followed Pet
Sounds with the six-months-in-the-making hit “Good Vibrations.”
The B-Boys toured; he stayed in Cali cooking up a distinctly
American concept album—with lyricist Van Dyke Parks—that would
show those Limey bastards, the Beatles, a thing or two.
Didn’t happen. Brian had serious problems with dope, and the
band had problems with the songs. To save face—Smile
had been widely hyped—Smiley Smile was hastily recorded
and released instead. Many like this album, but to these ears
it’s unlistenable crap made by stoned idiots who didn’t have
a fucking clue about arrangements or production. (The best
proof of this is the 1971 album Surf’s Up, on which
the Boys finally figured out how to operate in the studio
without Brian.)
What Smile would have sounded like has been a great
guessing game for decades. The fragments pointed in different
directions: Would it have been bizarre and jokey, like the
alternate version of “Heroes and Villains,” with its midsong
break for aural comedy? Or would it have been edgy and adventurous,
like the 1966 demo of “Surf’s Up,” with its threatening outbursts
of brass and Brian’s scary, lonely lead vocal?
This entirely new version, made without any Beach Boys involvement,
is both—sort of. There’s plenty of humor in the farm- animal
squawk of “Barnyard,” and an odd menace in the minor-key treatment
of “You Are My Sunshine” and the fearsome “Mrs. O’Leary’s
Cow,” but neither mood dominates. This Smile, a collaboration
between Wilson, Parks and vocalist-multinstrumentalist-“secretary”
Darian Sahanaja, is right down the middle, both cohesive and
listener-friendly.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wilson’s arrangement of
the full-length songs with shorter pieces into suites is ingenious,
to the point of seeming almost organic. And he does it in
a way that makes Paul McCartney (Abbey Road, side two)
and most subsequent imitators seem like punks.
There’s only one great “new” song on the disc, mostly because
the B-Boys raided Smile for every commercially usable
song for assorted albums they released from ’67 to ’71. And
it’s the aforementioned “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow.” Originally it
was called “Fire,” and Wilson was convinced it actually started
real California wildfires when it was first recorded. (Ah—the
’60s.) Tellingly, every song rerecorded for Smiley Smile—“Wonderful,”
“Vega-Tables,” and “Wind Chimes”—is much improved on here.
And every original Smile track released in later years
by the B-Boys—especially the transcendent “Surf’s Up”—suffers
slightly in comparison.
If this release of Smile is a vindication for Brian
Wilson, it’s a triumph for lyricist Van Dyke Parks. He’s an
American original, and his mix of historical references and
non sequiturs seems funnier, and more moving, than ever. He
likely is wearing the biggest smile of anyone.
Last
Call
The
After Hours (Victimized Records)
Unimpressed by what commer- cial metal and rapcore bands offered
through the late ’90s, Troy hardcore bands like Dying Breed,
Stigmata, Flat Broke and One King Down kept the local hardcore
underground afloat. Its ability to withstand the seasonal
nature of popular genres cannot be underestimated. The men
are lager-hardened black shirts with three-day stubble, their
knuckles bruised; yet the scowls bend into smiles surprisingly
easily. The women are practical and scrumptious, and suffer
no fools kindly, grinding cigarettes out on the arms of drunken
suitors. Scenes come and go, but this South End artillery
just keeps pounding the kids into landfill year after year.
Troycore has a long and wonderfully pestilent history, and
the city is well-known nationally for being a priority tour
stop. Bands like the CroMags, Hatebreed, Murphy’s Law, Madball,
Agnostic Front, Sworn Enemy and Sheer Terror have forged strong
friendships within its working-class ranks, which now include
the impossible-to-ignore Last Call. Their full-length debut,
The After Hours, is a corpulent, dastardly bit of crossover
that suitably carries out the mission set forth by Collar
City’s finest back in the day.
Last Call’s brand of hardcore is timeless, like an old tour
shirt, like a good war movie involving Japanese Zeros. Singer
Ralph Renna takes betrayal, just desserts, pride, failure
and the embarrassment of addiction, chops them into powder
and makes blasting caps. Thrash and punk influences give the
songwriting a crucial edge, the guitars just sort of basking
in that racy, old-school buzz that gets the blood boiling
and the fists soaked with other people’s sweat. No processed
nonsense here, just powerful drumming and cataclysmic breakdowns,
the crunchy hardcore goodness that makes life better. Punch
that clock and pay the goddamn bills, and that’s how it should
be. There’s clearly a smelting of influences here: The unforgiving
“Conspiracy” is driven home by a wash of dirty punk, and the
searing “Diablo” is a brutal Hesh study working like a lesser
demon to wedge its message in your rotten-egg bucket nice
and proper. But Last Call’s specialty is really just hellish,
hyperbaric hardcore anthems like “Interrupted Angel” and “Mud
in Yer’ Eye.” I mean good God, the might!
On a technical note, the production could have packed a little
more ass-whomp. It is difficult to play the disc at blessed,
harmful volumes due to a fierce low end, and that’s a shame,
because songs like “Ghost in the Mirror” and CD opener “Deep
End” are just begging for it. I mean, bashing-on-the-Bilco-door
jonesing for it. I mention this because it’s all here:
alacrity; fortitude; a strong, uncomplicated message; unimpeachable
chops. I’m just one of those guys who would have liked Renna
and Co. to spend more than one day on this disc. That said,
it’s an explosive debut for a few hours’ work.
—Bill
Ketzer
Vitamin-D
Build
Another (Landlocked)
The trumpet never found a comfortable voice in rock &
roll. The lung-powered instrument that was there from the
start was the saxophone. Its ability to convey rebellion and
breathy gritty sex made it a natural in everything from surf
combos to the carefully contrived Dave Clark Five. Flutes?
We won’t even mention them. But the trumpet was only to be
found as part of a horn section, the polite friend brought
along to the party by Mr. Saxophone. It wasn’t until the second
decade of the genre, when “& roll” fell by the wayside
that the potential for the instrument was explored. Thank
the nonrocker himself, Herb Alpert, and thank the pocket trumpet
solo on “Penny Lane” for opening brass doors. The trumpet’s
sonorous imprint adds a regal bearing, and its human-scaled
expressiveness can tug at the heart in the way a guitar never
can.
Which leads me to the debut release by Vitamin-D, a Brooklyn-based
ensemble built around trumpeteer, guitarist, singer and songwriter
Dennis Cronin. His playing has graced such pastoral entities
as Lambchop and the Willard Grant Conspiracy. Here he’s surpassed
the works of some of his peers, creating a gently undulating
set that moves gracefully from the instrumental opener “Valentine,”
a beautiful melody over the foundation of austere piano chords,
to the sly rhythmic tug of the unembellished electric guitar
riffing on “Clear.” The set’s two covers perfectly describe
the breadth of Cronin’s interests: Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie
No. 3,” here offered up in the midst of party buzz audio verité,
and Vic Chesnutt’s “When I Ran Off And Left Her.”
—David
Greenberger
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