Wilson celebrates living

After gestating for nearly 40 years, Brian Wilson’s SMiLE was one of the most surprising musical revelations of 2004, surpassing most expectations and creating new ones for what fans assumed would be an understated follow-up LP.

Four years later, That Lucky Old Sun is, in many ways, far less ambitious than SMiLE, but more effortlessly enjoyable. It’s no long-awaited masterpiece, but how many albums are?

Named for a 1949 Frankie Laine hit, Sun features Wilson at his most plaintively poetic, and also in what appears to be his most well-adjusted mental state since the pre-Pet Sounds days of surfer girls and little deuce coupes.

The record is structured in sections, each of which maneuver around a series of spoken-word narratives praising the life and times to be had in southern California. If Pet Sounds was Wilson’s “teenage symphony to god,” That Lucky Old Sun is his sexagenarian paean to Hollywoodland.

The most surprising thing about Sun is its effervescent optimism, which shines brightly on nearly every track. Wilson’s voice doesn’t have the same lilt it did in 1970, but he injects songs like “Going Home” and “Good Kind of Love” with a tunefulness that belies his years.

Other cuts, like the aptly named “Southern California” and the jaunty “Morning Beat,” jettison the pretension inherent in the narratives and showcase Wilson just having a good time in the studio. It’s ironic that an album so fit to be a summertime soundtrack should be released so soon before the leaves begin to turn.

For those fixated on genre, That Lucky Old Sun unfolds with a combination of the pop songcraft and harmonies of the Beach Boys’ early hits with the aged wisdom of Wilson’s late ’60s compositions, without so much as a hint of the grandiosity that made Pet Sounds one of the best albums ever recorded.

It really boils down to pure pop, but who better to trust with your bubblegum than the man who wrote “Fun, Fun, Fun”?