A confession: I had to get a bit liquored up to write this review. Why? I'll tell you - because Brian Wilson's Smile is a miracle, and real miracles are daunting, if not impossible, to confront. I'm not talking about a "Giants win the pennant" type miracle. This is more a " turning water into wine, healing the blind man's eyes with mud. I've never been much of a believer in such things, but I now believe to my soul.

How do I begin to describe the effect of this masterwork? I guess as good a place as any would be my reaction upon hearing the first ten seconds of Smile's "Heroes and Villains," a tune that I've listened to many, many times before in its previous incarnation, recorded at the tail end of the '60's - goose-bumps, hair on the back of my neck standing at attention - that's the only way I can characterize it. Here we have Brian Wilson, a man, an artist, that at this point most of us believed could barely tie his own shoes, recreating a musical glory first committed to tape almost forty years ago. And, not just getting it done, but doing so in a manner so true, so right, that it transcends mere facsimile. Sure, he's got some obviously talented cohorts acting as mid-wife (major kudos to the Wondermints, Wilson's backing band here), but no one could, or would want to, take away from Wilson's achievement in completing his long-delayed magnum opus.

Make no mistake, that achievement would have been a remarkable thing, whether it had been released in Wilson's '66-'67 peak, or here in 2004. The music on this album is absolutely breathtaking. The compositions that Wilson created during a mental breakdown that followed in the wake of a fierce musical competition with Paul McCartney, incorporate everything from Aaron Copeland's sweeping scope to Pilgrim's Progress to, well . . . the Beach Boys transcendent harmonies, and far beyond. Here it is, 37 years past its originally planned release date, and this album is still stunning in its breadth and depth. How any album could be so surprising in the era of post-punk, post-rock, post-whatever-the-hell else, is hard to even comprehend.

Any attempt to sum up the album's accomplishment ends here: Smile is a concept album that transcends its concept. Although we know, from Wilson's own comments, that he wanted to produce an album that summed up the American experience in the way that the Beatles work was often uniquely "British," he actually achieved that and more. His tools in this act were often almost exclusively musical. Though his collaborator, Van Dyke Parks, supplied lyrics that, in the most oblique of terms, captured Wilson's intent, the real message comes through in the development of melodic themes; restated when appropriate, always built to resounding climaxes. Nowhere is this more evident than on the album's mid-point spiritual high, "Surf's Up." In a stunning example of the notion that context is everything, the song draws immeasurably from the crescendo that is formed during the "Song for Children/Child is Father of the Man" medley, leading into a profound instrumental prelude that only a song as ingenious as "Surf's Up" could justify. For anyone aware of the song from its previous inclusion on the album of the same name, it is impossible to deny that "Surf's Up" here stakes a claim to greatness that was simply beyond its reach in its previous, lesser company. The same is certainly true of the other familiar tunes herein. Give a listen to the glorious recreations of "Cabin Essence" and, perhaps most remarkably, "Good Vibrations," and gape in wonder.

In the end, consider this: imagine Paul McCartney trying to re-create "Sgt. Peppers," here and now, without the aid of Lennon, and utilizing his voice as it stands today. Imagine it somehow being every bit as great, and important, as the original, and perhaps considerably more poignant. Out of the question? Absolutely. Now imagine that he had achieved just that. What would we call that, if not a miracle?