by Smile. The group remained effectively blacklisted by the music press, to the extent that reviews of the group's records were either withheld from publication or published long after the release dates. Writing in his 1969 book Outlaw Blues, Paul Williams summarized that Wild Honey was "a work of joy [...] new and fresh and raw and beautiful", and said that while the album's boogie woogie piano riffs were, "in their own way, as inventive as Brian’s more textured records [...] we expected more (from Brian) than we would expect from any other composer alive, because the tracks we'd heard from Smile were just that good. Smiley Smile was [...] a confusion [...] and Wild Honey is just another Beach Boys record." Rolling Stone reviewed that the Beach Boys regained their better judgement after the "disaster" of Smiley Smile, although their use of "pre-existing ideas and idioms" on Wild Honey is less satisfactory and original than their earlier work: "It's kind of amusing that the Beach Boys are suddenly re-discovering rhythm and blues five years after the Beatles and Stones had brought it all back home". Jazz & Pops Gene Sculatti wrote: "[the Beach Boys] have the audacity to fool around with r&b, a territory indeed alien to them. Surprisingly, Wild Honey works well. It isn't the least bit pretentious, it's honest, and convincing." In a column for Esquire, Robert Christgau wrote that the album "epitomizes Brian Wilson", including the song "I'd Love Just Once to See You", which "expresses perfectly his quiet, thoughtful, sentimental artistic personality." Billboard welcomed the band's return to form after the "avant-garde" Smiley Smile, but was critical of "How She Boogalooed It" as "far below the group's quality" and predicted that "I'd Love Just Once to See You" would not receive airplay. Disc & Music Echo awarded the album "LP of the Month" and wrote that it was the band's best since Pet Sounds. The magazine concluded that "Others who, like us, felt Brian Wilson was becoming bogged down in his complex arrangements can relax and listen to the most refreshing sounds for many months." In a 1968 Crawdaddy! article, David Anderle reported that the Doors' Jim Morrison considered Brian Wilson "his favorite musician" and Wild Honey "one of his favorite albums. [...] he really got into it." Retrospective Like Smiley Smile, Wild Honey was later reevaluated by fans and critics who highlighted the record