Brian Wilson

What made Brian's utopian fantasy so believable was the guileless hypocrisy of the simpletons fate and family tied him to--his shy, sincere, goofy, subtly tortured lyrics took off from the cheerful hedonism of the Beach Boys' secular chorales and white-boy soul. Solo, the pain in his voice is all too unmediated, and he isn't deep enough to make something of it--he sounds like the sincere, talented, mildly pretentious nut he is. What's more, his multiproduced million-dollar return is weighed down by a collective Phil Spector obsession--comes off incredibly labored. Of course, Smile was probably kind of overwrought too. (Grade: B-)