Brian Wilson is taking a risk devoting the first half of tonight’s show to his lumpy interpretations of the music of George and Ira Gershwin. While the Beach Boys’ troubled genius raised pop to unsurpassed heights of wigged-out splendour in the late sixties, the Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin LP that came out earlier this year was hideously over-egged, its Fantasia orchestrations taking songs such as ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ and ‘I’ve Got a Crush On You’ to places they were surely never meant to go.
At the Grand Canal, however, the conceit proves surprisingly endearing. Far more engaged and authoritative than at his stilted Electric Picnic turn two years ago, Wilson visibly enjoys leading his 12-piece band through the LP, his dandified arrangements making far more sense in the flesh than on record. You are reminded of Sufjan Stevens’ recent Age of Adz, another project that used mid-20th century classical music as a jumping off point for a journey into truly outre waters.
That record was inspired by the borderline insane ‘outsider artist’ Royal Robertson. Wilson’s struggles with mental illness are well known and there is a similar sense of being invited to look at the world from the perspective of someone not entirely at home in it.
After the interval, Wilson slips into Jukebox mode. Starting with ‘California Girls’, the ‘best of’ set moves sprightly from Beach Boys sand‘n’gals phase (‘Surfer Girl’, ‘The Little Girl That I Once Knew’ ) to Wilson’s angst-pop period (‘Heroes and Villains’) to the group’s greatly underrated seventies comeback (‘Sail On Sailor’) and their much trumpeted Pet Sounds-Smile era (‘Good Vibrations’, ‘God Only Knows’). Recently turned 69, Wilson has hinted this might be his last tour. If so, he has exited the stage with a flourish.