"That Lucky Old Sun," slated for release Sept. 2, got its world
premiere last September in London's Royal Festival Hall, the same
venue where he unveiled the finished "Smile" after aborting it 37
years earlier.
"Smile" had been widely anticipated as a rival to the Beatles' "Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" as a dramatic advance in pop music
of the time. After its belated release in 2004, "Smile" landed at No.
2, behind Kanye West's "The College Dropout," among the Village
Voice's nationwide poll of pop music critics on the year's best
albums.
"That Lucky Old Sun," written by Wilson in collaboration with "Smile"
lyricist Van Dyke Parks and Wilson's latter-day band member Scott
Bennett, features an "interwoven series of 'rounds' with interspersed
spoken word," its composer said in a statement released today.
It comprises a series of narratives with the sun, voiced by Wilson, as
the narrator of a series of snapshots of life in Southern California.
Reviewing the London performance, England's Mojo magazine called it
Wilson's "most ambitious new work since returning from the wilderness,
[recalling] 'Pet Sounds' and 'Smile,' not least in its playfully
baroque arrangements -- a playground riot of glockenspiel, timpani,
strings and harmonies all played with a smile -- and melodic nods to
the Beach Boy canon, complementing the autobiographical bent of the
lyric-book."
1. That Lucky Old Sun
2. Morning Beat
3. Room With A View (narrative)
4. Good Kind Of Love
5. Forever My Surfer Girl
6. Venice Beach (narrative)
7. Live Let Live
8. Mexican Girl
9. Cinco de Mayo (narrative)
10. California Role
11. Between Pictures (narrative)
12. Oxygen To The Brain
13. Been Too Long
14. Midnight s Another Day
15. Lucky Old Sun Reprise
16. Goin' Home
17. Southern California
18. Roll-Around Heaven Reprise
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