Review of Van Dyke Parks-Songs Cycled album by Peter Reum

This album has been long anticipated. Van Dyke last did an album of songs live in the Late Nineties, another with Inara George, and his series of singles from last year with gorgeous art work accompanying each one has been incorporated into Songs Cycled. Van Dyke has always followed his muse, and this album feels to me like an overview of his life's work in music, summed up song by song. The word Rococo comes to my mind when I listen to Van Dyke's music. My ears enjoy Van Dyke's music the way my eyes enjoy a Seurat painting. There is more revealed with every listen.

I have had roughly a week to live with this album, and while not all of it is new, it is sequenced in a manner that reminds me of a multi-course meal with tastes of a number of different styles of music and diverse thoughts incorporated into a true album, in the best sense of that word. That is, it seems like a collection of musical thoughts and styles bearing a resemblance to a photographic album which incorporates a number of different thoughts and images from life. There are "palate cleansers" through the album, that is, there are lighter moments that bring a smile or amusement after a heavier message. The album begins with Wedding In Madagascar (Faranaina), a tune resembling perhaps a tango. The vision I see listening is a newlywed couple playfully doing the tango at their honeymoon location.

The second tune recalls for me visions of Casablanca, and a war torn couple remembering a special encounter in Paris while working for the opposition. Seeing and listening to this tune reminds me that, as a nation, we are again in a war we cannot win in a country far away. Clearly, the words from Casablanca, "We'll always have Paris" comes to mind. Van Dyke's noted recollections of the murder of civilians by allies of the USA hit me strongly, as we today hit civilians with drones in remote Asian countries. Killing by proxy.

Hold Back Time is a vignette that for me brings to mind the peace that comes with living with a young family in a fixer upper we fixed up ourselves, with our memories catalogued in "albums," one for each child, chronicling the kids growing up, while we fail to notice our own aging. My friend David Leaf has a saying that I prize greatly..."Peter, these are the good old days." We don't remember the trials and the misery, we try to remember only the sweet memories...the dessert that Life serves.

The American South is the place Van Dyke calls home, despite living almost 50 years now in The Golden State. This tune called Sassafras is a slice of Southern life that is filled with innocence. It a manner of speaking, it reminds me of Wouldn't It Be Nice. This song brings a smile, levity....it cleanses our palate and leads into another course. But, again, it is a picture of youth and innocence.

Black Gold indicts us for our own dependence on fossil fuels. A ship founders on rocks and gushes    oil from it's side like a soldier pierced by a spear. While we blame the ship's captain, we continue to allow these merchants of fossil fuels to ply their wares and spoil all that is natural and wonderful to us. We allow this charade to continue, believing that this next time will be different. Fool me once, screw you, fool me twice, screw me.

Of course, out of all of these barrels of oil have come a few wonders, one of which is the Trinidadian ensemble that Van Dyke produced in 1971,  The Esso Trinidad Tripoli Steelband. This sample of their incredible album is another palate cleanser. Saint Saens sadly did not live to see his composition, Aquarium, be recorded by this very fine product of the oil business, the steel pan.

The next number, Money Is King, hearkens back to Van Dyke's second album, Discover America. The jaunty, bouncy music lulls the listener into a toe tapping mood, at first not hearing the powerful message and social criticism expressed in this fine example of Calypso. For some reason, this tune reminds me of Gil Scott-Heron's observation about Apollo 11, "my rent I can't pay, and Whitey's On the Moon." Calypso is the most clever form of music invented by mankind.....social criticism disguised as "don't worry, be happy" music.

Wall Street is a reflection on the fact that New York's most potent symbol of wealth and greed was brought to it's knees by unknown people who did not like the culture of conspicuous consumption that Wall Street symbolized. In the end, strangers were brought together, however briefly, by the experience of a common tragedy. Were that we could see the misery our own wars bring upon other parts of the world. Could it be that same feeling that engendered 9/11? Who knows?

The experience of facing your own death, or facing a member of your family dying, can bring mortality back to our conscious mind, having forgotten for so many years during Hold Back Time. I am a person raised in the very type of low church that Van Dyke describes in his introduction to The Parting Hand. We call that form of singing plainsong, and we sing psalms that way, as well as a number of hymns. Perhaps we are most vulnerable when we recognize everything ends, and we have to say goodbye. If hymns are sung at low church funerals, they are sung in plainsong.

Van Dyke has confirmed many times that The All Golden is a song about Steve Young, a troubador in LA before troubadors were appreciated there. His song Seven Bridges Road is a song that describes the South as well as anything ever written. Van Dyke stripped down The All Golden here, as he is wont to do in his live appearances, and it reveals a song with the same multiple levels of meanings that are very similar to Van Dyke's lyrics for Smile.

Van Dyke Parks and Inara George

Missin' Mississippi gets at that feeling that Thomas Wolfe, another Mississippian, describes when he says you can never go home again, because it's never the way one remembers it. My experience with that feeling emerged when I listened to Van Dyke describe his sadness about how two hurricanes devastated his hometown, Hattiesburg, as well as the Gulf Coast...Biloxi, Gulfport. Mobile.....This song is both a love song to Van Dyke's memories, and a way of expressing the grief that comes when you know a human tragedy of massive proportions has leveled your fond memories of home.

The real Van Dyke Parks-Age 22

Van Dyke Parks-Cover Shoot for Clang of the Yankee Reaper 1975  

After all of this emotion, all of these tastes, all of these sounds and syllables, it is only fitting that we turn to the hymn that unites the entire South, African-American and Caucasian, that is sung in churches Sundays throughout the South, Amazing Grace. Another denizen of the South, Bill Moyers, did a PBS special on Amazing Grace, showing it's remarkable power to unite a region too divided to unite any other way.

Van Dyke Parks 2012 Los Angeles

So what we have is a picture of America, the America of Van Dyke Parks' lifetime. His album of American vignettes. Like many albums of pictures, there are some that are somber, some that arouse anger, some that bring a grin, some that demand justice, and some that just show how people live. Songs Cycled is Van Dyke's own album of America, a reflection on us as a people. Most of all, Van Dyke has given us a handcrafted album he made himself.

Text Copyright 2013 by Peter Reum-All Rights Reserved