Re: the live stuff, I watched Pet Sounds and SMiLE live shows on youtube a year or two back - I think the SMiLE show is a UK one rather than the one you’re referring to. I’d be interested to see the behind the scenes stuff.

Seeing Pet Sounds and SMiLE back to back is an interesting compare and contrast, and it’s quite an achievement in that you can see both as complete bodies of work.

I sort of feel like SMiLE and that whole live comeback era have been slightly forgotten of late. They didn’t get much mention after Brian’s death. Brian’s later catatonic performances took a bit of the shine off it all maybe.

Anyway here are the albums:

Imagination

Unfortunately very bland in both sound and composition. People used to complain about the sound of Love You and his self titled, but those have the magic spark in them, this unfortunately does not.

Songs are stock chord sequences, none of the twists or lurching changes that usually make Brian’s writing interesting. The overall sound is smoothed over mush with not much interesting instrumentation or arrangements going on.

The final track Happy Days is at least interesting, with some odd dissonant harmonies going on, and some of those autobiographical lyrics that I always suspect had little to do with Brian and were more his team trying to drum up yet another “Brians Back!” narrative.

To think he had timeless classics in the vault like “It’s Not Easy Being Me”, and he was made to put this out instead.

EUGENE LANDY INNOCENT!

Reimagines Gershwin

Mildly pleasant surprise in that this turned out to be slightly more interesting than expected. The songs are reworked into something approximating the SMiLE format, with segues, songs sometimes blending into each other, and similar instrumentation. The two ‘new’ songs are a bit shite, and sometimes it feels a bit like a novelty record, when they take old Gershwin tracks and give them rock n roll arrangements. But it’s really not bad and Brian sounds quite into it.

In The Key Of Disney

Similarly the band sound pretty good here, lots going on in the arrangements and you can hear what every instrument is doing. It’s a shame for these covers albums they let him sound more or less like a Brian Wilson record is naturally supposed to sound, but then for half his albums of original material (and the new Beach Boys album) they process everything to death.

Main problem here is that most of the songs are bad. And the ones that are good don’t particularly benefit from Brian singing them with his later Bill Murray voice. Though it is nice that he sounds quite strong and confident on it.