The enigma that is Smile begins on the highest note of hopeful aspirations, an invocation of "Prayer" that augurs well for a concept album its architect intended to be a "teenage symphony to God." As the lovestruck year of 1967 began, all signs pointed to its eagerly awaited masterpiece grandeur — the success of "Good Vibrations," which had evolved from the Pet Sounds sessions to show Brian Wilson's technique of cutting-and-pasting wildly divergent soundscapes could combine commercial and artistic success — and Brian's immersion into a world in which everything clamored to make music.

There are tales of Wilson and his entourage sitting around the dinner table, crafting rhythmic patterns with silverware and place settings; putting a microphone on the musique concrete of vegetables crunching and barnyard animals baying and household tools banging; all snippets of song attempting to tie the four elements of this planet in a spherical radiance, along with Van Dyke Parks's retelling of the Ply-mythic journey across America from the time of the Mayflower to the return-to-the-sea of "In Blue Hawaii." It also undertook to untangle the Wilson family dynamic ("Child is Father of the Man"), reassert the primacy of wonder ("Wonderful"), trace a musicological tale… read more »