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Oct 31, 2011Quibbles aside, everything about this package is richly detailed, immensely pleasing, and overall a wonderful experience.
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Dec 8, 2011Despite the box set's girth and groovy 3-D cover, anyone who's not a hardcore completist or David Leaf understudy will be sated by the 2-CD version.
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Oct 28, 2011Memories are fuzzy, but the music now it's here is pure and gorgeous, the familiar mesh of brotherly voices exquisite as ever.
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Nov 9, 2011Somehow, allowing it its true moment on the shelves has solidified the record's historical importance.
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Oct 28, 2011The SMiLE Sessions captures Wilson, session musicians and the Beach Boys in moments that are chaotic, loopy and remarkably in synch. It's a consistently brilliant album.
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Nov 7, 2011Every bit as riveting as the groundbreaking music is the ever-present studio chatter.
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Nov 18, 2011The word "cinematic" gets thrown around a lot in describing densely orchestrated music these days, but "Smile" was among the first albums to achieve that distinction in the rock era, conjuring movie-like images in the listener's mind with its vivid blend of instruments and sound effects (the crunch of vegetables, the tapping of nails, the riotous conversation of barnyard animals).
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Nov 3, 2011It's easy to lose yourself in the countless studio takes. Little gasps of pure genius here and there. The slow dissolution to it all. The echoes of things to come. It's a history lesson come to life, and that's part of the reason the collection here works so well.
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Nov 1, 2011He [Brian Wilson] more skillfully balanced inspiration and aspiration elsewhere.
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MojoJan 31, 2012Even though it'll never be fully completed, Smile is a welcome time capsule from an unrepeatable moment in popular culture. [Dec 2011, p.106]
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Nov 28, 2011The SMiLE Sessions is a superior version, its sound undeniably belonging to its era and the true brilliance of Wilson's compositions seeming to shine a tad truer.
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Nov 1, 2011The Sessions are a great listen when you have time to sift through it all, and the package gives hardcore fans more than enough material to immerse themselves in.
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Nov 2, 2011What's here is brilliant, beautiful, and, most importantly, finally able to stand tall on its own.
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Dec 16, 2011This release reorients us around familiar material, but outdoes all previously existing versions in the scope of its execution and comparative completeness.
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Nov 1, 2011There is a moment in this five-CD ocean of music when you agree with its creator, the Beach Boys composer-producer Brian Wilson, that the greatest pop album ever made is still within reach.
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Nov 30, 2011The five-disc set breaks down the album to its building blocks, while the two-CD version provides outtakes and an edit of what the original final product might have been: part tribute, part cartoon, part dream.
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Nov 8, 2011Wilson has always said he wanted to make a "teenage symphony to God." This Smile is so wonderfully close. Hallelujah.
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Oct 28, 2011What's beyond doubt is the quality of the music he made.
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Oct 28, 2011Proving that it is possible to have too much of a good thing, the five discs of this outtakes-and-all edition take the (let's be honest) rather meager delights of Brian Wilson's unfinished "masterwork" and wring the life out of them.
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UncutNov 1, 2011The Smile Sessions fits into no present-day category, context or franchise. [Nov 2011, p.105]
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Under The RadarNov 2, 2011The quantum leap that SMiLE represented in 1967 is impossible to recreate or access in 2011. [Oct 2011, p.110]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 60 out of 66
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Mixed: 3 out of 66
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Negative: 3 out of 66
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Nov 18, 2011
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Nov 1, 2011
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Dec 21, 2011