I've been through my fourth listen of Smile in about the same number of days. Good for Brian Wilson for finally finishing his 30 year-old obsession with creating the great american album.

Here's what it's supposed to be, from the liner notes:

"The Smile dream Brian was referring to was born in the summer of 1966, when Brian and his visionary partner, Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks, first began working together. In response to the musical British Invasion, their desire was to bring forth something very American and, in its humor and wide ranging subject matter, to create something radically different from the music being made by their contemporaries. In addition to presenting a new way popular music might be written and recorded, they wanted to prove that rock music could be art."

With that as the standard, I can only say that they failed miserably.

First, there is no standard by which any of this can be classified as rock music. I'm not sure that it would have been that even in 1966. As for something radically different, it fails there too. It sounds like the Beach Boys meets Broadway circa 1920. Yes, that may be different, but it's not radically different as much as it is reactionarily derivative!

As for the album in general, it is perhaps the most annoying thing I've ever played, unless you like to hear the penny flute about every four minutes on average. Perhaps you have to be an ardent Beach Boys fan to like this, but it is a never-ending pulsating melange of piano, vocal harmonies and weepy strings that is high on four-part harmony and low on melody, and that is so derivative by today's standards that it is a weak characature of what it would likely have been back when it was a burning vision in Brian Wilson's head. It isn't until Good Vibrations hits your ears after about 40 minutes that there is any reprieve from the noise and an excuse to tap your foot and whistle along.

Stay clear of this unless you are interested for purely historical reasons or want to torture your older bothers.