Of all the improbable stories in the improbable history of pop music, the history of Brian Wilson's SMiLE remains unique. Originally begun in 1966 when Wilson was chief-cook-&-bottle-washer for the Beach Boys, SMiLE was long considered one of pop-rock's great crash 'n' burns. A concept album built upon the studio wizardry and proto-hippie worldview that had yielded one of the band's biggest hit singles, "Good Vibrations," SMiLE was created in collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, an eccentric L.A. music figure known for crafting alternately whimsical and opaque Joyce Lite lyrics, as a song cycle with thematically connected themes and leitmotifs. A daring move for a band that was primarily thought of a singles machine: Sgt. Pepper had yet to hit the stores, so it's hardly surprising that the rest of the band didn't know what to make of this musical soufflé. Unsupported by his family (the Beach Boys being largely a family act), overindulging in drugs, Wilson ultimately suffered a breakdown, scuttling the project.

In an attempt to salvage things, an album filled with "comedy" cuts and underproduced dribs of SMiLE material was released as Smiley Smile, with only one full Parks/Wilson collaboration, "Heroes And Villains," on the platter. Over the years, other snippets of the aborted work would appear in Beach Boys records, rarely as full tracks ("Surf's Up" being the notable exception), more often as part of other songs (as when backing tracks for SMiLE's "In Blue Hawaii" were used for Sunflower's "Cool Cool Water"). Occasionally, hints of what might've been surfaced on bootlegs and as CD bonus cuts - a more extended version of "Heroes And Villains" was attached to Capitol's two-fer reissue of Smiley Smile/Wild Honey, for instance - but for many hard-core Beach Boys fans, endlessly replaying their old albums and sighing about lost chances, the uncompleted SMiLE was the Great Abandoned Album.

Now, of course, Brian - away from his old group - has revived his work, with the help of Parks and fannish power poppers like the Wondermints. Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (Nonesuch) the cover cheerily announces, and, surprisingly enough, the guy actually delivers on his promise. From its opening acapella sighs to its trailing Theremin, SMiLE shows us what was in the "young and often spring" man's mind. The results are everything that his admirers would hope to hear.

The disc opens with "Our Prayer/Gee," which blends one of Brian's trademark wordless vocal harmonies with the Crows' doo-wop classic "Gee" (other clipped bits of Americana songwritery that'll appear: "You Are My Sunshine" and "I Wanna Be Around"), then segues into the extended version of "Heroes And Villains." With the help of musicians that he'd earlier assembled for a concert tour of a finished Beach Boys classic (Pet Sounds), Wilson effectively reinvigorates his old band's sound, while, placed in their original context, Parks' lyrics achieve their own quirky flow. (Separately settled on a disc like Surf's Up, surrounded by the rest of the group's more plain-spoken lyrics, they stuck out like a geek wallflower at the high school prom.) If at times, Brian's vocals betray a hint of psychotropic slurriness, this only adds to the whole work's evocativeness and helps to sell the songs. When Wilson sings about a ruined life momentarily lifted by song and the sight of playing children, you believe him.