That Lucky Old Sun
- Brian Wilson
- Band Name: Brian Wilson
- Record Label: Capitol
- Release Date: Sep 2, 2008
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In many ways, Wilson updates his style, while still paying tribute to the things he loves.
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80That Lucky Old Sun is easily Brian Wilson's most consistently enjoyable, moving solo albums; indeed you have to go back to "Surf's Up" itrself to hear a Beach Boys long-player as good. [Spe 2008, p.99]
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80There are very few other albums this year with as much force, verve, and sheer musical imagination as That Lucky Old Sun. [Sep 2008, p.84]
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That Lucky Old Sun lacks the magnificent shock of SMiLE, Wilson's 2004 completion of that '67 album. But it has a natural, hopeful flow that leaves you warm all over.
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80Sweetly and unmistakably, That Lucky Old Sun limns the sunset of Wilson's career, while still showing how California is at its most beautiful through his eyes.
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80After taking care of some unfinished business in recent years, Brian Wilson shows he still has the stuff of conceptual brilliance on his eighth solo album.
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80What makes the record work, though, is Wilson's ability to create melodies that blend the childlike and enthusiastic with the melancholic and nostalgic.
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80That Lucky Old Sun, then, is easily Wilson's best collection of new material since, well, the original SMiLE sessions.
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78"But now I'm back." And he is, with his finest non-"Smile" album since the golden age of the Beach Boys. Lucky us.
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Whereas 2004's epic completion of "Smile" allowed the Beach Boy to rewrite (and right) history, his follow-up plays like the ultimate product of that self-examination.
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The sunniness can feel strained, and 'Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl' is as unnecessary as sequels get. But when Wilson is on his game, you feel lucky to still be soaking up his rays.
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The album pays wistful, hopeful tribute to the place he's long called home, and in spite of hard years and losses, now wants to enjoy for a while.
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Though absent any truly great songs, That Lucky Old Sun is the most engaged and consistent effort from pop's lonely genius in decades.
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70Not only an opportunity to look back, then, but a joyous reminder that, when at his lowest, Brian Wilson stepped up and did the unthinkable.
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His sun-and-fun lyrics can be saccharine and anachronistic, but his complete lack of artifice helps to sell the sticky likes of 'Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl.'
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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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60That 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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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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60This 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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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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50Sadly 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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40It 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.
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20Every single note feels forced, in hock to a sound and a set of attitudes that date from a time before many of us were born.
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Wilson continues to rehash southern California culture with increasingly less perspective, further eschewing the untamed adolescent aesthetic by including stuffy musical theater elements and a top-down point-of-view that's more clumsy analysis than sincere memoir.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 16 out of 20
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Mixed: 2 out of 20
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Negative: 2 out of 20
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KentG.10Easy to listen to........updated, reflective semi beach boy sound...........real nice to hear new stuff from Brian Wilsin.
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JohnL.10
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SandraK.10full of the Brian Wilson melodies and harmonies that we all love. Wonderfully fresh and appealing.