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The concept of LA as a 'Sunblessed City of Angels' is trite, co-opting another's song for the theme tune lazy, and much of what follows resembles a Beach Boys tribute band.
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That Lucky Old Sun rarely approaches the subtleties of the classic Beach Boys sound. What it evokes instead is the driving '70s productions on latter-day Beach Boys albums like "15 Big Ones" and "Love You."
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For all its determined optimism That Lucky Old Sun ends up as more an affirmation of Mr. Wilson’s legacy than an expansion of it.
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That Lucky Old Sun is a brave but failed attempt to add a new chapter to the ongoing story of a pop legend.
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This album leaves no doubt that the former Beach Boy is now fully recovered from the 1967 nervous breakdown that effectively stalled his career for decades.
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Sadly it's undercut by music that tirns Brian Wilson into merely another Brian Wilson imitator. [Sep 2008, p.85]
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Brian Wilson and his karaoke-smooth backing band the Wondermints have instead given us something on par with 1970s Beach Boys--kinda bloated, kinda silly, mostly out of date, but with enough earnestness and pop intuition to be so, so, so puerile that hating it would be like hating Raffi.
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It appears that Wilson came up with a couple of tunes about his own troubled life but realized it might be too much of a bummer, so he tacked on a few happy-sappy Beach Boys throwbacks to make for a sunny little song cycle about a magical place filled with sun, sand and surfer girls.
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Some of it works--'Southern California' 's honey-harmony’d and piano-led wistful look at the history of the Beach Boys in specific and SoCal in general is rather touching. But the rest of the album, especially the overwrought spoken-word interludes, remains a series of harmonized thuds and (however pretty) blank-eyed lobotomy-pop.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 34 out of 42
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Mixed: 2 out of 42
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Negative: 6 out of 42
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BrendanD.Sep 13, 2008
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Mar 6, 2013
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KentG.Sep 19, 2008Easy to listen to........updated, reflective semi beach boy sound...........real nice to hear new stuff from Brian Wilsin.