Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2019 15:12:42 GMT -5
Its alright, but there were a LOT of alright albums in '68 trying to be deep. The only track that really stuck with me is Palm Desert, which is pretty good as a standalone track by my opinion. The rest of the album left little impression, and some of it, like the titanic music with water sounds, just strikes me as pretentious for the sake of it without providing actual interesting or catchy tunes.
I think Van needed someone like Brian to reign him in. Brian had commercial sensibilities that, up to and including SMiLE, were never wrong. And Brian brought a lot of honest, universal emotion into his music that made it resonate with the listener. Even SMiLE has that, though it's not as prominent as Pet Sounds. Van's music just lacks that heart. It's a whacked out art major trying every trick they can just to show they can, to make a statement of how DEEP and SMART they are, without a good ear for "does this SOUND good? Does it make me FEEL something?"
I don't mean to dump on Van. He's talented, has a love for the craft, and he really brought out the best in Brian. But I think Brian brought out the best in him too. I think they both needed collaborators to challenge them and/or restrain them depending on what was needed. And just so it's clear I don't resent him at all for walking on a sinking ship to take a lucrative career deal. Anyone would have done the same thing. But...while it was reasonable and smart to do so, I think that choice has haunted him and his career ever since. Would anyone really care about this album were it not for the association with SMiLE? Doubtful. It'd just be one more of many, MANY buried gems of the era--Ive been digging through a lot lately and there's many just as good as this, so that's not an insult. But, nobody asks Van about Song Cycle years later, they're STILL asking about the lost album he started with Brian. That's his legacy, I think he knows and resents it, and perhaps on some level he regrets not finishing it at the time.
Anyway, I'd give this a 6/10. It's not something I'd really listen to for pleasure. It's a curiosity. There are far better (and far worse) similarly inventive albums from the time I've heard, and Song Cycle kinda blends in with the crowd of them. I think it's similar to SMiLE in the fact that it's a song cycle, and because it's VDPs lyrics. But I think the similarities largely end there. My intuition is SMiLE is more similar to Frank Zappa's We're Only In It For the Money or The United States of America or Forever Changes. It had the spoken word comedy and zaniness of the first, the societal critiques of all three, the drug references and allusions of the second, and the Wrecking Crew like the Third. If you could boil down the 60s SMiLE into ingredients, I think it would largely be THOSE three albums...and maybe a small portion of Smiley, Song Cycle and BWPS.
I think Van needed someone like Brian to reign him in. Brian had commercial sensibilities that, up to and including SMiLE, were never wrong. And Brian brought a lot of honest, universal emotion into his music that made it resonate with the listener. Even SMiLE has that, though it's not as prominent as Pet Sounds. Van's music just lacks that heart. It's a whacked out art major trying every trick they can just to show they can, to make a statement of how DEEP and SMART they are, without a good ear for "does this SOUND good? Does it make me FEEL something?"
I don't mean to dump on Van. He's talented, has a love for the craft, and he really brought out the best in Brian. But I think Brian brought out the best in him too. I think they both needed collaborators to challenge them and/or restrain them depending on what was needed. And just so it's clear I don't resent him at all for walking on a sinking ship to take a lucrative career deal. Anyone would have done the same thing. But...while it was reasonable and smart to do so, I think that choice has haunted him and his career ever since. Would anyone really care about this album were it not for the association with SMiLE? Doubtful. It'd just be one more of many, MANY buried gems of the era--Ive been digging through a lot lately and there's many just as good as this, so that's not an insult. But, nobody asks Van about Song Cycle years later, they're STILL asking about the lost album he started with Brian. That's his legacy, I think he knows and resents it, and perhaps on some level he regrets not finishing it at the time.
Anyway, I'd give this a 6/10. It's not something I'd really listen to for pleasure. It's a curiosity. There are far better (and far worse) similarly inventive albums from the time I've heard, and Song Cycle kinda blends in with the crowd of them. I think it's similar to SMiLE in the fact that it's a song cycle, and because it's VDPs lyrics. But I think the similarities largely end there. My intuition is SMiLE is more similar to Frank Zappa's We're Only In It For the Money or The United States of America or Forever Changes. It had the spoken word comedy and zaniness of the first, the societal critiques of all three, the drug references and allusions of the second, and the Wrecking Crew like the Third. If you could boil down the 60s SMiLE into ingredients, I think it would largely be THOSE three albums...and maybe a small portion of Smiley, Song Cycle and BWPS.