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: OK, it wasn’t released this year. True. But it’s a keeper. Nothing of late can top this ace no-how, dealt out by this Italian romantic musical titan. Paolo embodies a combo perfection:
Incomparable ability as singer, melody maker, lyricist, arranger, pianist, self-producer, pianist, studio-mixer.
Catch his kazoo. All despair! Seriously.
He can astonish too, and invite you to dine or dance, while sensing somehow things’ll all work out.
English lyrics are provided in these Nonesuch album liner notes. Like first-reel Fellini, this artist outranks the entire bag of navel-gazing tunesmiths and lame-o popsters and rockers from the ’60s forward. The album Reveries: indispensable!
Video after the jump.
