With Van Dyke Parks’ new Songs Cycled (Bella Union), the renowned composer, arranger and vocalist (in that order), not only releases his first album of originals since 1995’s Orange Crate Art (with Brian Wilson singing), but lends his usually complex creations a renewed sense of simplicity. The thoughts may be determinedly complicated and touched by the soul of social protest, but Parks’ music is deliciously direct, while remaining as elegant as anything he’s done for himself (à la 1968’s chamber-pop initiator Song Cycle) or others (the Beach Boys and Rufus Wainwright amongst them). Parks will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature with him.
Parks: He still holds forth there, at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Of this collection, my favorite poem is “I Am Waiting.” (“I am waiting for for someone to really discover America … And I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right … And I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder … “)
An ex-naval hero Commander in WWII, Ferlinghetti survived, illuminated and questioned authority.
Read this book. It won’t turn you into a commie. I promise.
Video after the jump.
