Oh, God!

Since Wilson released exactly one album between mid 1985 and mid '95, you've had to look between the cracks to get the whole death-and-rebirth story. Personally I'm fond of it all: the unreleased and heavily Landy-inflected Sweet Insanity album (1992), the odd songs that have slipped out on Beach Boys albums, the spotty and eccentric batches of demos that have been bootlegged. But much of this music has done more to support the "Brian Wilson is nuts" theory than to refute it, and it hasn't been the stuff of happy endings. To different extents, happy endings are the stuff of the two new Brian Wilson albums: the Don Was-produced film soundtrack I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (MCA) and the Wilson/Van Dyke Parks collaboration Orange Crate Art (Warner Bros.). Neither is a major work, but both are delightful in a low-key way. Because Wilson wasn't in the driver's seat for either project and because he didn't write a new song for either, both amount to trailers for a comeback rather than the real thing.

Retro-minded producer and first-time director Was did right by his subject with the film I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, a supportive psychological profile that pulled off a big, uplifting conclusion (Wilson wordlessly reconciling with his estranged daughters during the course of a performance of "Do It Again"). The soundtrack album is also a fannish project from start to finish. Was handpicked the material, mostly Beach Boys numbers that cultists hold dear (though only "Do It Again" had been a major hit). He also did the arrangements, which update the original versions in nonintrusive ways (the haunting vocal arrangement for " 'Til I Die," a frank and poetic song about the onset of mental illness, was left intact). His only misstep was including "Still I Dream of It," a mid-'70s demo drawn from Wilson's most damaged period (the slightly smoother Beach Boys version turned up on the Good Vibrations box); its presence here undercuts the optimism of the project.

Wilson had only to show up and interpret the songs convincingly, which he does. His voice has taken on a ragged, world-weary quality that gives new slants to the oldies ("Caroline, No," which was heartbreaking in its original Pet Sounds version, now comes off as an Aznavour-ish torch song with an underlying current of "Ah, c'est la vie"). What endures is Wilson's sense of wonder with the mysteries of romance. And he may be the only 50-year-old who can pull off a line like this, from the eternally giddy "This Whole World": "When girls get mad at boys, you know, many times they're just putting on a show." He sounds as if he couldn't wait to share this amazing conclusion he's just worked out.

The value of Orange Crate Art is in part symbolic. Wilson and Van Dyke Parks last worked together on Smile, the legendary 1967 album whose abandonment hastened Wilson's breakdown (various pieces of it have since trickled out). But it's worth remembering that Parks worked on that project mainly as a lyricist; and Wilson's ability to wrap haunting tunes around unwieldy lines like "columnated ruins domino" says much in his favor. Parks went on to a willfully weird, often impenetrable career as a writer and arranger, with infrequent solo albums that explored Americana on acid. His heralded 1968 album Song Cycle remains a unique, visionary work. It also remains unlistenable.

Perhaps to honor Wilson (who appears only as lead singer), Parks has made Orange Crate Art his most listener-friendly album, a set of breezily orchestrated, tropically slanted pop pieces whose hints of dissonance are left as hints. In other words, it's nothing more or less than a thinking person's Jimmy Buffett album, if that's not a contradiction in terms. Parks still makes a few wrong calls. The barbershop arrangement of the title song is far less evocative than the solo-piano one heard in Was's film, and Gershwin's "Lullaby" makes a jarring finale. More often he borrows the spirit, if not the sound, of psychedelic-era Beach Boys ("San Francisco" has an intro that Smile buffs will recognize), and he gives Wilson a charming-rogue persona that suits him surprisingly well. On "Sail Away," buoyed by steel drums and calypso-ish rhythms, Wilson resolves to "drink a toast to what's left of my memory." Buffett would be glad to have written that line, but it wouldn't have the same poignance.

What comes through strongest on these albums is the affection of Was and Park for the singer, and their determination to give him a musical life that doesn't revolve around the Beach Boys. One can only imagine how they took the recent news that Wilson has begun to write songs with Mike Love again; the first one these two completed is said to bear the title "Baywatch Nights." God moves in mysterious ways.