aaamusic | On 22, Jun 2012

 

Thanks to Bella Union you will have now the chance to retrace the most significant eight years of visionary genius Van Dyke Parks’ career. The eclectic actor, musician, singer and composer from Mississippi is probably best known for his collaboration with Brian Wilson in the legendary Smile project, probably the longest-gestated album in music history.

Produced alongside The Wondermints’ Darian Sahanaja, Smile saw the light well after 37 years after its ideation, due to the fragile mental state of Wilson and its unrealistic vision in terms of sound and production.

Much of Smile wouldn’t have been possible without the twisted virtuosity of Van Dyke Parks. Cinematic, unclassifiable in all his stylistic undertones, his gift is now available in three reissued albums, 1968’s Song Cycle, 1972’s Discover America, and 1975’s Clang Of The Yankee Reaper.

The triptych, consisting in the first VDP’s solo albums, resumes the meaning of term Americana even before this was coined. His music does not limit itself to drawing upon folk and country but embraces a more all-encompassing framework, which includes bluegrass and calypso, incorporates all those winds blowing in an America so much rooted in its traditions as open to be reshaped by trends coming from East and South.

Song Cycle is described by the same artist as a psychedelic product of a “flamboyant and a more flaming individuality. You can’t reach anything great without that kind of courage. I love the Liverpool taxi cab drivers’ motto, “Boldly going forward because we can’t find reverse.” That’s become my philosophy!”

Discover America is a trip towards the continent’s roots through the voice and the memories of its underdogs, revisited through the exotic calypso tunes of artists from Trinidad & Tobago, as a reminder of an America as porous and permeable as imperialistic.

The Clang Of The Yankee Reaper confirms and enlarges the same concept as before with an eye to classical music (see the reinterpretation of Pachelbel’s Canon) and the pop aesthetics of the Seventies.

Not to be missed, this reissue is a three-volumes manual of History of tomorrow.

★★★★★

Author: Lorenzo Coretti