New contest :: Brian Wilson’s Lucky Old Sun (vinyl)

Brian Wilson returned last month with a new album, the sunny citrus-bedecked That Lucky Old Sun. In the 4-star Rolling Stone review, David Fricke refers to the music of Wilson and the Beach Boys as “healing.”

I paused over that word and rolled it around several times in my head. I’ve decided that Fricke’s simple summation is one of the best descriptors of Brian Wilson projects that I’ve ever read, and one of the reasons for Wilson’s perennial popularity. The sun-dappled melodies, the luminous harmonies — I’ll never grow tired of letting them wash over me, and never realized before how they do heal a little bit of the brutality of life.

NEW CONTEST:
We’ve got three sweet prizes to give to three readers:
* One limited-edition 180 gram vinyl copy of the new record
* One 7″ vinyl single of “Midnight’s Another Day”
* One copy of the new album on CD, for the turntable-less

So if you want to enter, please leave me a comment specifying which of the three you’d want (vinyl, 45 single, or CD), and I’d love to hear about your favorite moment in a Beach Boys/Brian Wilson song. Contest will end Wednesday.

In the meantime, you can stream the album here, and be sure to watch the lovely video of Brian’s appearance on the fabulous Black Cab Sessions in London (with all five of his band members wedged in there with him!). Listen to how lovely those acoustic harmonies sound whilst zipping around the streets of foggy Londontown:

That Lucky Old Sun (Black Cab Sessions) – Brian Wilson

My favorite collection of Beach Boys songs is still probably the unvarnished purity of those 1967 rehearsals that Justin posted a few years back. The stripped arrangements let their voices shine in a near-celestial way.