Now we know, with startling clarity and almost painful candor, that all those glorious songs that made this tenement kid dream of sand, sun, bikinis, and all the pacific horizon things the boroughs couldn’t deliver, were classically structured acts of genuine day by day survival. A way of shutting down the voices of doubt, rage, and paranoia with voices of lush harmony, orchestral pop and pure melody.

Candid and tragic, yet in the end exquisitely triumphant and love affirming, I am Brian Wilson is the last (and only) word on Brian’s all-too-written-about and over-analyzed past. Yes, the bad voices dog him most days, but he can only look forward from here. Creating, as he always has, the big beautiful choruses that pushes his, and our own, mocking inner voices aside.

– Mike Jurkovic