Apologies, late seeing this. I was attempting to describe the lack of cynicism in Brian Wilson’s work regarding the beauty of the tropes of mid-century American

Apologies, late seeing this. I was attempting to describe the lack of cynicism in Brian Wilson’s work regarding the beauty of the tropes of mid-century American suburbia that, when taken to its extreme, felt like it made the work land, to me, often somewhere between the hyperreal and surreal. In this sense, it feels somehow beyond sincerity - an inversion of it, or an inversion of an inversion. I used ‘bizarro’ to point towards both the surreal inverted-ness, but also to reference the Superman character, to try and link that part of the sentence to 1950’s USA, and Wilson’s childhood. To me (it’s a subjective experience, of course) there are compositional aspects that create this feeling. In the early hits, for example, there’s an astounding lack of low-frequency sounds (bass guitar, kick drum mixed low, etc). It’s very much mixed for tinny radio - partly a product of the time, but also very much due to his arrangements. As if to say: ‘no darkness here’. And equally (though I don’t think Brian was writing lyrics, but an arrangement of the sounds they create is enough for me) lyrically, even the early stuff is batshit weird: “When some loud braggart tries to put me down, and says his school is great, I tell him right away: What’s the matter buddy? Ain’t you heard of my school?” “A bushy bushy blonde hairdo” Etc. I think the early work goes beyond ‘Americana’ into something weirder, but non-cynical. Very fever dream technicolor, and I think anticipates a lot of the work ‘darker’ Americana artists, like Lynch, who another commenter referenced, would later do. Another commenter mentioned that Wilson’s father was, by many accounts, incredibly, incredibly cruel, and I think that’s perhaps not irrelevant to the uncanniness of Wilson’s work. Maybe there was a conscious choice to write only about the beautiful parts of his milieu, but that’s impossible to know. A song like “In My Room” is terrifyingly beautiful / uncannily sincere in its optimism, given what we know about Wilson’s childhood. A lot of people, especially artists later in the century would, I think, find its hopefulness bizarre. And very moving. That’s a very long version of what I was trying to say, or point towards - the usual cliches about the impossibility of writing about music apply!