If anyone was fortunate enough to catch Brian Wilson on the Tonight Show last Wednesday night he or she saw the legendary Beach Boy back in the public sphere to share his most famous abandoned child, Smile, with the world. Every time I see Brian Wilson I can't help but see this kind of silly, cragged Muppet. Seeing that whale of a grin (and I don't think he blinked once!) I can't imagine I was the only viewer creeped-out. Wilson has gone through some of the darkest times of reclusion and addiction, disappearing for over two decades while racked with drug problems, depression and cult tyranny. While all Beach Boys fans couldn't be happier that Wilson has overcome his immense stage-fright and personal specters, he is undoubtedly as strange, sad and internal as ever before.

Smile's story begins in 1966 when in the wake of Wilson's earlier successful album, Pet Sounds. He giddily drifted back to the studio in collaboration with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. Intended as a "teenage symphony to God," Smile became an object of obsession for Wilson (over 85 recording sessions). However, such compulsion eventually led to his emotional breakdown and departure from the Beach Boys and subsequently the outside world. Here Smile would remain dormantfor over three decades, popping up in innumerable bootlegs, and even in a few legit tracks appearing on the Good Vibrations box set.

The masterpiece could have remained somewhat untouched until early this year, when the revitalized Wilson announced he would return to the studio following his touring of Smile and completely rearrange and record his baby. In any case, this recording of Smile realizes the final permutation of songs that have been scattered via bootleg for eternity.

Wilson's voice is a more sonorous, lower and mature voice that sounds hollow and hokey compared to his earlier unavoidable and distinct sound. The best part about the original recordings, however, was that indescribable teenage whine that brought those recordings to known heights.

That same sense of teenage subtlety and insecurity is gone. The wicked, erratic rambling structures and random pieces still remain, but the heart is left to history. In this regard, many Smile enthusiasts prefer some of the shaggy, unfinished scrappiness of the original versions and the mystery that they held in suspension.

However, with Wilson's completion of his "album that could not be finished," one's expectations are likely to be thwarted, as realization always trumps imagination.

Compositionally, Wilson obviously had a field day with Smile from the beginning. The repeated motifs and other baroque, idiosyncratic orchestrations have been the album's hallmark from the beginning. It's these moments of abeyance and fire that are the most tremendous and can't help but induce vocal backing on the part of listener.

Without question Smile is a pop masterpiece-intensely structured and unexpected, overlapping turns in its voyage amongst the maiden isles of Wilson's genius. He structures the album in three parts, each with its mooring song and melodic motif which wraps the sections together.

Smile is like youth: humorous, jokey, and playful. Gone are the serious elements that characterize Pet Sounds. Smile is busting with imagery pushing off into a cute, kitschy exploration of Americana. The album is a series of fairy tales, spliced with Wilson's teenage growth and emotional latency. It's a significant retraction from the serious self-exposure, height, and vulnerability of Pet Sounds.

While Smile rings no less autobiographical than Pet Sounds, it's definitely less dangerous and direct. Wilson shrugs reality and defers to his internal visions of paradise.

The album is Wilson's passion, now finally seeing its fatal staging. Much of Wilson's personality is this bizarre trade-off between private intensity and genius, as well as his silly, featherweight live persona. His stage presentation has always been as fragile, stiff and, frankly, interesting as it is so flimsy. Smile might not be probing those depths so much as Pet Sounds did before.

However Smile does offer incredible insight and enjoyment of the most instable of stage performers, fumbling for self-discovery. In this sense, Brian Wilson and his masterpiece offer important insight into pop expression, pushing the threshold of artistry and playmaking with its poetry, protest, and imagination just as teenagers do the adult world.

Brian Wilson will perform his lost masterpiece, Smile, along with orchestral backing on Oct. 14 at the Orpheum Theater.