- Audio CD (3 Sep 1993)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: Edsel
- ASIN: B0000245LG
- Other Editions: Audio CD
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 418,461 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
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 1960s California pop. More heard-of than heard, Song Cycle sailed against the tide by 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 counter-cultural 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, internalised 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 Sutherland
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Parks was a child actor from Hollywood with a talent for words and an old-fashioned take on things. He famously collaborated with Brian Wilson, but more tellingly wrote "Come in the Sunshine" for Harper's Bizarre.
This album is like Harper's Bizarre if they had been truly bizarre. We get snatches of other tunes, apparently "wrong" key changes, instruments it's almost impossible to identify, polyrythymic effects married to slightly effete vocals, tunes apparently rooted in the 1920s flapper-scene Americana and plenty of playful fun (where else can you get a tune called "Van Dyke Parks" published in the Public Domain and a tune called "Public Domain" published by Van Dyke Parks?
Why does this record divide reviews so much? I've just been looking at the Amazon reviews for the Fiery Furnaces and it strikes me first how much the reviews of both are polarized as well as how similar the music is. More than the Furnaces, even, Park's music sounds like what a music-hall revue might sound like after you've been given a deadly cocktail of narcotics and you're about to die. Underwater.
Why do people like this, then? Becuase it doesn't give up all it's secrets on the first (or fifth) listen. Even after years of listening, I'm still noticing things I've not noticed before. It flaunts its differences and revels in its eccentricity.
If you've a taste for brave experiemental music, where the unexpected can happen at any time, then this one's a must. What do you mean, not available?
This album is like Harper's Bizarre if they had been truly bizarre. We get snatches of other tunes, apparently "wrong" key changes, instruments it's almost impossible to identify, polyrythymic effects married to slightly effete vocals, tunes apparently rooted in the 1920s flapper-scene Americana and plenty of playful fun (where else can you get a tune called "Van Dyke Parks" published in the Public Domain and a tune called "Public Domain" published by Van Dyke Parks?
Why does this record divide reviews so much? I've just been looking at the Amazon reviews for the Fiery Furnaces and it strikes me first how much the reviews of both are polarized as well as how similar the music is. More than the Furnaces, even, Park's music sounds like what a music-hall revue might sound like after you've been given a deadly cocktail of narcotics and you're about to die. Underwater.
Why do people like this, then? Becuase it doesn't give up all it's secrets on the first (or fifth) listen. Even after years of listening, I'm still noticing things I've not noticed before. It flaunts its differences and revels in its eccentricity.
If you've a taste for brave experiemental music, where the unexpected can happen at any time, then this one's a must. What do you mean, not available?
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
It took me many listens before I cracked this album. As with (surely) most other listeners, I first heard the name Van Dyke Parks in connection with the Beach Boys 'Smile' era recordings. Even the most complex of those did little to prepare me for the density of this album. But what at first seems impenetrable is in fact peppered with ways in: hook lines here and there which make repeated listenings increasingly rewarding. 'The All Golden' emerges as insanely uplifting, though on first
hearing(s) just plain odd; 'Donovans Colours' is recognisable for about three bars. Lyrically we are also closer to Finnegan's Wake than 'Help Me, Rhonda' but it is the enduring genuine weirdness of this album that makes it so compelling.
How Parks ever worked again given the amount this must have cost to record and the amount it probably recouped is a mystery all of it's own. Enjoy the sound of one man's eccentric musical vision presented in glorious Technicolour.
hearing(s) just plain odd; 'Donovans Colours' is recognisable for about three bars. Lyrically we are also closer to Finnegan's Wake than 'Help Me, Rhonda' but it is the enduring genuine weirdness of this album that makes it so compelling.
How Parks ever worked again given the amount this must have cost to record and the amount it probably recouped is a mystery all of it's own. Enjoy the sound of one man's eccentric musical vision presented in glorious Technicolour.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Lots of people won't get this stuff. They may cast it aside as rubbish, denigrate it as purile meaningless junk, castigate it as self-indulgent. The way I look at it is thus: Van Dyke Parks made an album, and this is the way he made it. I think you can safely say he made no attempt to pander to anyone. If you want to hear one of the rare occasions when somebody uses music in a entirely original way, but without descending into the avant garde or brash art noise, then you will find it here. You might not like it, but you won't ever hear anything else like it.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Irk the purists
The reputation of this recording rests solely upon it's cult status - a bit like 'Smile' really. However, since the proper release of 'Smile', the realisation that it's quite... Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2004 by M. Gillingwater
Has 'cult' and 'masterpiece' written all over it
Poor old Van Dyke Parks. After his high-profile collaboration with Brian Wilson (as lyricist on the abortive Smile album), everything must have seemed to be going his way when... Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2002 by G. Owens
Gershwin has a pile-up on Laurel Canyon
From listening to this album I think that Van Dyke Parks is the sort of man many people would shy away from in supermarkets. Read more
Published on 31 Mar 2000
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