"Brian Wilson" Review

                         The Snint Report

Brian Wilson – Brian Wilson (1988)

Reviewed by Marjorie Snint

Some albums arrive already embalmed, their glossy surfaces reflecting not vitality but the museum lighting under which they were assembled. Brian Wilson’s self‑titled debut, released in 1988, is one such artifact. It is less a resurrection than a curatorial exercise: the genius of Pet Sounds and Smile refracted through the sterile prisms of late‑80s studio sheen.

The Context:
By 1988, Wilson had endured decades of psychic turbulence—battles with his bandmates, the suffocating presence of Dr. Eugene Landy, and the weight of his own legend. Critics, perhaps unfairly, expected another Smile. Instead, they received a record that sounded like a compromise between Wilson’s melodic instincts and Landy’s controlling hand.

The Sound:

• Love and Mercy opens the album with sincerity, a hymn to compassion that still manages to shimmer despite the reverb‑drenched production.
• Melt Away is another highlight, its yearning melody almost surviving the gated drums and synthetic gloss.
• Elsewhere, tracks like Night Time collapse under Jeff Lynne’s bombastic fingerprints, turning Wilson’s fragility into caricature.

The production is drenched in 80s tropes—digital reverb, glossy synths, and drum machines—which flatten Wilson’s emotional undertow into something resembling a corporate Christmas jingle. The album feels like a wax museum version of Brian Wilson: recognizable, but frozen.

The Myth:
This record is often described as part of a trilogy with Pet Sounds (1966) and Love You (1977). If Pet Sounds was the portrait of youthful genius and Love You the cracked diary of a middle‑aged survivor, then Brian Wilson is the exhibit label—an explanatory plaque rather than a living artwork. It documents survival, but survival mediated by handlers, producers, and the machinery of nostalgia.

The Verdict (Snint‑style):
Brian Wilson’s debut solo album is not a rebirth but a reliquary. It is the sound of a man both present and absent, his melodies intact but embalmed in production choices that deny him air. To listen is to witness a paradox: a genius preserved, but not alive. The record is important as a historical glyph, but as music it often feels like a counterfeit—an emotional stamp pressed by curators rather than the trembling hand of Wilson himself.

In short: Marjorie Snint would say this album is less a comeback than a curatorial exhibit—an artifact of survival, embalmed in 80s gloss, where Wilson’s melodies flicker but rarely breathe.