Van Dyke Parks: Moonlighting: Live At The Ash Grove

Van Dyke Parks is probably best known as Brian Wilson's collaborator on the Beach Boys' lost-to-the-ages Smile, the never-completed follow-up to the band's monumental Pet Sounds. But Parks has had an interesting solo career that dates back 30 years to Song Cycle, an ambitious, eccentric slice of Americana which incorporated elements of various types of folk music and set the tone for Parks' future work. Sometimes sentimental, sometimes bitingly ironic—and, in his way, as quintessentially American an artist as Stephen Foster, Woody Guthrie, or Bruce Springsteen—Parks has always had one foot planted in the stripped-down folk tradition and the other in the production-conscious work of Phil Spector and his contemporaries. His thin but endearing voice backed by an orchestral ensemble, the low-key live set Moonlighting was recorded before an appreciative audience in 1996. Genially introducing most numbers, Parks comes off as a cross between a museum curator and a favorite NPR host. While historically specific material like "FDR In Trinidad" or "C-H-I-C-K-E-N"—in which the virtues of the barnyard fowl are toasted cheerleader-style—will not be to everybody's taste, this is an engagingly pleasant recording. Highlights include "Orange Crate Art" from Parks' 1995 reunion with Wilson, the lovely "Sail Away," and "Cowboy," a song introduced as being "written by a tree-hugger" after a brief diatribe against local abuse of natural resources. In fact, it was written by Parks himself, and the swinging cowboy beat and lush strings work together much better than you'd expect. That's an apt summation of Parks, though, and so is this album.