Orange Crate Art (Reissue)

幻に終わった名盤『Smile』から約30年後に実現した奇跡！ブライアン＆ヴァン・ダイクが思い描いた「アメリカ」が音盤に結実。カリフォルニアのノスタルジックな風景画を元にヴァン・ダイクが作曲したナンバーにブライアンのボーカルが被せられた本作は、2人が長年追い求めた幻の「アメリカ」像の一端が窺える内容となっている。

Entertainment Weekly - "...Pop innocence at its best on an album so sweet it's disarming." - Rating: A- NME - 8 (out of 10) - "...The music--which is superb throughout--is old, barbershop, orchestral; there's a beautiful sense of America before rock and roll here. The whole thing has a sort of sense of peaceful Pacific evening about it....an extraordinarily atmospheric record..."

Brian Wilson enlisted Van Dyke Parks as his collaborator for SMiLE, the follow-up to the Beach Boys' groundbreaking album Pet Sounds. One single, "Heroes and Villains," was released from the sessions and became a hit, but the rest of the album remained on the shelves. Over the years, the legend of SMiLE continued to grow, as bootlegs circulated and selected songs were recorded by the Beach Boys (including "Sail on Sailor," from 1973's Holland). Parks and Wilson didn't work again until 1995, nearly 30 years after the SMiLE sessions. However, the resulting album, Orange Crate Art, isn't quite a collaboration -- it's a collection of Parks songs as sung by Wilson. Van Dyke Parks' approach is intellectual, not instinctual, which means his compositions are complex; similarly, his lyrics are dense and laden with poetic imagery and metaphors. Then again, Orange Crate Art isn't a pop album -- it's a self-conscious work of art. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine|