Capitol Records
2008
That Lucky Old Sun
About This Album
That Lucky Old Sun, Brian Wilson's second major thematic work, isn't quite the third coming of SMiLE. Instead, it's an ode to the Southern California of the '50s and '60s that the Beach Boys constantly evoked, and although it's polished with the peak-era production style that Wilson made famous, most of the songs are wrapped around the overwrought pop/rock he's revisited again and again since his first major return to form, back in 1976. As a thematic topic, "That Lucky Old Sun" is ripe for integration into Brian Wilson's California myth-making. A Tin Pan Alley chestnut from the '40s, it contrasts the ease of the sun's transit each day with the hardship of human toil on earth, a sort of "Ol' Man River" set in the sky. (Even better is the fact that it's a professional songwriter's account of working-class life, which dovetails perfectly with the Beach Boys' mythic vision of Southern California and the illusionary aspects of Hollywood's brand of reality.) That Lucky Old Sun begins with Wilson briefly stating the theme and the intonation of a heavenly choir, but then barrels into the first song, "Morning Beat," a rocker with a set of adolescent rhymes (one example: "The sun burns a hole through the 6 a.
Track List (try tracks 2,4,5,7,8,10,12,14,16 and 17)

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