Van Dyke Parks: Song Cycle
When it was released in 1968, I read some reviews that praised Song Cycle as a revolutionary masterpiece and Van Dyke Parks as a genius— this Rolling Stone review appears to have been contemporary, and gives you a good idea of the reception I remember. But it didn’t sell very well, which came as no surprise to anyone who heard it. In fact, considering how much it must have cost to make, it’s amazing that it ever saw the light of day, and, I suppose, a tribute to the adventurousness of some record companies at the time. I seem to recall having to look for a while to find a copy, and after listening to it a few times thought, “Well, that’s interesting,” and as far as I can remember never listened to it again until a few weeks ago, when Parks’s beautiful arrangements on Joanna Newsom’s Ys prompted me to dig out my old LP of Song Cycle, clean it up, and digitize it.
The result is that I’ve heard it as if for the first time. Yet my basic opinion is more or less the same as it was almost forty years ago: interesting. It’s more interesting than I gave it credit for at the time, partly because the recorded sound isn’t that good, at least on this LP, and there’s a lot of important detail that I would have missed in hearing it on my little portable stereo. It’s a sort of brilliant pastiche of American musical styles, and technically on a level far above most pop music, but it leaves me thinking that it’s more brilliant than profound. The lyrics are a problem, consisting of Joycean wordplay that for the most part doesn’t really add up to much:
Cracks in the heat and then caught by the wheel catch the country store feel for the hackamore crew view the crackerbare coterie standing by. One line bred randyrand and too few wretched meals.
Whatever. Ultimately it seems light, much of it merely playful. But really, it’s worth hearing; I can’t think of anything else in its class. I imagine there’s a remastered CD version around that does more justice to its complexity and nuance.
(By the way, here is my review of Ys.)
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Light On Dark Water 
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