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Van Dyke Parks
Song Cycle

(Warner Bros, 1968)

Enfant terrible of arrangement submits woozy, sprawling slice of Cosmic Americana.

Van Dyke Parks

MOJO’s Deputy Editor claims that he could never again feel quite so enthusiastic about Stereolab once he’d heard the first Neu! album, and I must admit to similar feelings about Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs incarnation the moment I was introduced to Van Dyke Parks’ astonishing debut. The spectral vaudeville, the distant ’30s/’40s mic effect, the skeins of warped folk and country – it was here first by 30 years, and though there’s no saw-playing credited in the Song Cycle sleevenote, it sure sounds like there’s a saw. More startlingly still, given the sophistication of the musical synthesis and instrumental co-ordination, this was the work of a 22-year-old, albeit one who’d already done time in Brian Wilson’s Smile sandbox, hooked Frank Sinatra up with the career-reviving Somethin’ Stupid and pulled strings for Harper’s Bizarre, on his way to landmark production jobs with Randy Newman and The Beau Brummels. In fact it’s a song by the former, the wry slice of muso life that is Vine Street, that kicks off Song Cycle’s hyper-dense, wonky-grinned clatter, setting a theme of sorts – all roads lead to LA and its scene, already retreating to “hillside manors on the banks of toxicity.” Parks is no singer, but the wobble-box he’s put through prompts a Proustian rush of old-timey nostalgia, while the staggering music – embracing tubas’n’timps mini-symphony Palm Desert, the tipsy harpfest of The All Golden, and peaking with the gleeful, detail-stuffed maximalism of Donovan’s Colours – pioneers the post-hippy synthesis of freaky and folksy that would become a staple through 1968, 1969 and beyond. Visionary music, then, with one eye on the rear-view – the best sort, basically.

Danny Eccleston

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 10:01 AM GMT 10/06/2008

Further Listening

Van Dyke Parks – Discover America (Warner Bros, 1972)

Randy Newman – Randy Newman (Warner Bros, 1968)

Mercury Rev – Deserter’s Songs (V2, 1998)


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