Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle (NM/NM) – LP, JP 1978, With OBI

Song Cycle is an LP by Van Dyke Parks from 1978 released on the Warner Bros. Records label.

About this album

Song Cycle is Van Dyke Parks’ dazzling debut, a baroque and adventurous statement that pushed 1960s pop far beyond its usual borders. Released in 1967, the album blends folk rock, psychedelia and orchestral detail into a finely arranged sequence of California-inflected songs and fragments, with Parks’ writing drawing on old Americana, surreal imagery and rich harmonic shifts. Though not a major commercial success at the time, it has since become widely regarded as a cult classic and one of the era’s most ambitious pop albums. Its influence reaches across orchestral pop, chamber pop and the more experimental edge of the Los Angeles sound.