The Beach Boys - "Wild Honey" (1967)

The Beach Boys rode a treacherous emotional and creative roller-coaster throughout their career. At first, they were deemed to be merely a surf-band. But they had two secret weapons at their disposal: their gorgeous harmonies and genius Brian Wilson at the musical helm. To put things in perspective, Brian was a step ahead of the Beatles right from the start, until, as is well known, he self-destructed during the recording of Smile, an ambitious, would-be masterpiece to follow up acknowledged masterpiece Pet Sounds. After allegedly destroying the master tapes (bootlegs would crop up throughout the following decades), the band hastily re-recorded the album in a wildly inferior version released as Smiley Smile. But the psychic damage was already done and it would take Brian Wilson almost four decades to recover and finally re-record and release his lost masterpiece. Which, by the way, I liked rather more than I'd expected.

Until then, he had one album left in him. The Beach Boys reconvened to record Wild Honey, a relatively short, back-to-basics album with pared-down instrumentation and little group vocals. It seemed as though Brian was either scared of digging in too deep inside his creative well of production effects or he was just content to let the songs speak for themselves. And while many might have been disappointed at what seemed like limited reach and scope, this is an album full of haunting melodies and little brushstrokes, perhaps the true heart of a very fragile soul.

The defining track is the title song. "Wild Honey" is a joyous blast of blue-eyed soul that seems like a once in a lifetime lunge at true happiness. Carl Wilson is said to have danced while singing it and it is a rapture of bitter-sweet soul-inflected melody. But the payoff comes in the instrumental break, where Brian plays a dementedl organ solo, creaking with static electricity that tells it all: at the end of his tether, discarding the intricate production values of his previous studio albums, he bares his soul, but for a few bars he's still intent on showing the world what brand new sounds his mind his capable of conjuring. I still don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it.