Slotted between the exceptional pairing of Orange Crate Art and the star-studded Gettin’ in Over My Head is this, Imagination. Brian Wilson’s solo work is on a pendulum of criminally underrated and deliriously awful. Those latter stages are just moments, bad enough to capsize his earliest works but, understandably, out of his control. Lullaby-like instrumentals are what Imagination opens with, because Wilson works in the literal world when it comes to piecing together this work. A bit ironic that an album named after the wild and different experiences we can have with our minds, especially given Wilson’s work on Pet Sounds and Smile, would sound so plainly rooted. But such is the case for Imagination, an album which never quite springs into life because the material just isn’t up to scratch. An uninspired double bill for the openers, and it doesn’t much improve from there. There’s a clear problem with the instrumental developments, but there’s no excuse for the lyrics, either.
While the usual strength of Wilson is this floaty, positivity-steeped style, it grates here. Both Your Imagination and She Says She Needs Me are the plain-sailing songs Wilson would have written with The Beach Boys in their earliest iterations. When you’ve heard a musician reach some new creative plain, it’s hard to recede from that. Wilson tries that with South America, a song which sounds vaguely autobiographical as he details a character whose care is not for those around him, but for the work at hand. A stretch better than what preceded it, but that’s not all that high a bar. All of Imagination feels remarkably passive, a step off from the quality Wilson would achieve on the albums preceding and following. Granted, Orange Crate Art had a featured artist in Van Dyke Parks, someone to keep Wilson on track. By the sounds of it, Wilson needed that. Songs like Where Has Love Been and Dream Angel are unfortunately crummy efforts from the veteran songwriter, while the overly sentimental Cry feels far too obvious a track.
An occasionally nice instrumental riff just isn’t enough to work for Wilson here. He’s capable of more, and listeners are right in expecting more. He manages to get a few moments of interest out in the latter half, but the damage is done long before that. Lay Down Burden has an inescapable niceness to it, and follow-up Let Him Run Wild is even stronger. They’re two sudden spots of quality from an otherwise underwhelming album. Wilson is hindered by the production more than anything else. This desire to make Imagination sound pop friendly at a time when the darker tone of the United Kingdom and the harsher rock and roll credit in the United States were at an all-time high is bizarre. It’s not as if they don’t try to do that with Happy Days, a clanger of an album closer.
Where the uncertain tomorrows and grating saxophone are locked in place for that album closer, it does paint a picture of why Wilson wouldn’t suit the wholly macabre tones set by others. Adult contemporary is not his scene, either. He’s an artist who can work with real, charming nuance when given the chance, but this just isn’t it. All too heavy on the heartstring-plucking experience, either that or there’s too much of a reliance on that adult contemporary tone. Thankfully the song dedicated to Carl Wilson, Lay Down Burden, is a stronger piece of work, but it never feels as though it matches up with the tone of the times. Wilson is a legend, but Imagination would have you think he could barely put together a song worth your time. At least the latter parts pick up.
