Smiley Smile - Beach Boys

Because the current layout of this album incorporates two records sandwiched together ('Smiley Smile' and 'Wild Honey'), I will review both, but separately, as they show incredibly different musical representations and periods in time. Smiley Smile: Smiley Smile was an album that only came into existence because of the scrapped Smile album. For this reason, it is very hard to look at it as a piece of work without comparing it to what could have been, and this is the trap that many people fall into when reviewing it. After listening to 'Pet Sounds', I became very interested in the rest of The Beach Boys discography, particularly their output after ...  Read the complete review

I'll say right off the bat that you can't help but be disappointed by Smiley Smile. This was finally the watered down release of the shelved infamous 'Smile' album, the follow up to 'Pet Sounds' that would build on the experimentation of that album. This album contained some of the original concepts and tracks from Smile but also some additional material recorded after the Smile sessions. What we ultimately get is a bit of an incongruous mess. This is strangely a somewhat weirder album with numerous throwaway nonsense songs such as 'Vegetables' and 'Wind Chimes' than Smile was intended to be and perhaps testament that Brian had indeed lost the plot. There is ...  Read the complete review

Smiley Smile is an album that divides the Beach boy loving public in very much the same way as The Beach Boys Love You album does. For many this album is a low point in the career of The Beach Boys and it's only saving graces are the two tracks that were released as singles namely Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains. To the rest of us this is a fabulous and unique album. When it was first released in 1967 I can believe it was a disappointment because this wasn't Smile. The public were waiting for something better than Pet Sounds as they were promised but due to objections from band mates (Smile was not commercial enough and had lyrics that made no ...  Read the complete review

Of all The Beach Boys albums, this more than any other is the album that should be stamped 'not safe for casual listeners'. Recorded immediately after Brian Wilson chose to abandon their ambitious 'Smile' project, this record was recorded in his home studio in a couple of days, whilst smoking the $2000 worth of hash they'd bought, and it sounds like it. Apart from the then recent singles 'good vibrations' and 'heroes and villains', which kicked off each side of the original vinyl lp, none of the tracks utilised the slick session men that had been such a big part of their studio sound- so the instrumentation is largely organ, bass guitar and ...  Read the complete review

This album contains some of the Beach Boys' classic songs: "Good Vibrations", which is legendarily the most expensive song ever recorded, requiring over 600 takes to record. There's also beautiful little harmony vignettes, such as "Wind Chimes", and surreal tone-poems such as "Fall Breaks And Back To Winter". But if you're expecting another album like "Pet Sounds" - 11 songs all of which could be chart toppers - this isn't it. "Heroes and Villains" is determinedly psychedelic, followed by a salute to garden greenery in "Vegetables". Apparently the band were surprised not to receive ...  Read the complete review