Van Dyke Parks - Song Cycle
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Van Dyke ParksEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1990-05-18
Music Label: Warner Bros / Ada
Soundtracks:
- Vine Street
- Palm Desert
- Widow's Walk
- Laurel Canyon Blvd.
- The All Golden
- Van Dyke Parks
- Public Domain
- Donovan's Colours
- The Attic
- Laurel Canyon Blvd.
- By The People
- Pot Pourri
Free Music Notes for Song Cycle
Free Music Review: Strike Up The Band Brother!
Hit: 4 Stars
JUST THE FACTS: This is a terrific album. Some people really seem to get offended by so-called "difficult" listening. I don't see how this is such difficult material except that the music doesn't stay anyplace for more than a few bars at a time, then ventures off somewhere completely else. For me, that's a big plus, -- it makes each brief moment all the more sweet, that's to say "catchy". As for the reviewer who said that Van Dyke was just "playing" with a big orchestra, I don't feel like that reviewer gave this album the time and repeated listenings that its intricacy deserves. You can certainly tell that VDP was enjoying himself. However, everything is where it should be. Even the little sound effects that pop in, like the sound of crickets when he mentions the nightime, etc. -- it's all very perfect. Van's genius is that he makes his convoluted compositions seem effortless, perfection to a flaw, as if he is indeed just playing around the studio. So be sure to listen carefully and you might be rewarded.
I take off one star for Van's voice. I've gotten used to it, but it can be a bit hard to take certain times throughout the album the first few times you hear it. That said, I can't really imagine anyone else singing on this. I love the accompanying female singers, and perhaps they should have been given more prominence. Van's voice is something that bothers you less the more you hear it.
Be sure and check out VDP's following album, "Discover America", which is a completely different direction, and from comparing the respective artist photos, a completely different VDP. His voice on "Discover America" is also much more pleasant.
I'm hoping fans of the resurrected "SMiLE" album by Brian Wilson, which VDP had a heavy hand in, will find their way to this album.
Song Cycle Poster
Former child actor Van Dyke Parks had reinvented himself as a songwriter, arranger, raconteur, and budding conceptualist when Warner Bros. bankrolled this brave, baroque 1968 debut, which has achieved true notoriety in the annals of '60s California pop. More heard-of than heard, Song Cycle sailed against the tide of guitar-driven, blues-drenched rock to bet on the orchestral ambitions of Sgt. Pepper, weaving a conceptual tapestry from folk, Tin Pan Alley, and classical strands. In place of generational anthems or confessional love songs, Parks's coy, modest tenor offered intricate, impressionistic wordplay ripe with puns, multiple-entendres, and geopolitical allusions far beyond the pale of countercultural rock. On songs such as "The All Golden," "Palm Desert," and "Laurel Canyon Blvd.," you'll hear poetic links to Brian Wilson's most convoluted, internalized soundscapes, as well as a wily musical intelligence that will either intoxicate or infuriate you. Not unlike a brattier, Californian cousin to Stephen Sondheim, Parks revels in musical and thematic puzzles, and Song Cycle offers his most seductive and challenging ones. --Sam SutherlandVan Dyke Parks' visionary 1968 debut, Song Cycle, rose phoenix-like from the ashes of his fabled Smile collaboration with Brian Wilson. Parks' breathtaking high-wire act fused the pop genius of Phil Spector, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway vertigo and the orchestral flare of American composer Charles Ives and made it wholly his own. Our definitive pressing of this landmark Warner Bros. album is sourced from the original analog master, and pressed on high-definition vinyl.
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