Thursday, November 20, 2008

At his creative peak, Beach Boys auteur Brian Wilson retired from touring to concentrate on composition and production. Fighting back from a late-'60s nervous breakdown, Wilson returned to touring in 1999. Yet at concerts like the one he played Tuesday at the Warner Theatre, Wilson seems hardly there.

He sits at a keyboard he rarely plays, reads lyrics from a prompter and struggles with simple banter. His major assets are a crack 10-piece band and a beloved back catalogue.

The Warner show divided neatly, if problematically, into two sets. In the first, the accompanists propelled their minimally involved frontman through an hour of such classics as "God Only Knows" and "Do It Again." During the second, Wilson showed more interest as he performed all of "That Lucky Old Sun," a new album of deft arrangements, heartfelt nostalgia and middling songs.

"That Lucky Old Sun" credits Wilson with lead vocals, but that overstates his onstage role. His singing was bolstered by as many as eight other voices, including something the Beach Boys never had: a soprano. Taylor Mills helped buoy the high harmonies, but it was guitarist Jeffrey Foskett who handled most of the falsetto parts. While Wilson said the group was "just experimenting" with having Foskett sing lead, it sounded like a permanent arrangement.

Wilson took a more active role in such autobiographical new tunes as "Oxygen to the Brain" ("life was so dead'') and "Southern California" ("I had this dream/singing with my brothers"), and the crowd responded emotionally to these musings. They weren't as fun fun fun, however, as the radiant oldies Wilson once wrote and the band behind him now sustains.

-- Mark Jenkins