Inara George, Van Dyke Parks - An Invitation
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CD Details
Artist: Inara George, Van Dyke ParksBrand: Parks
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2008-08-12
Music Label: Everloving
Soundtracks:
- Overture
- Right as Wrong
- Accidental
- Bomb
- Duet
- Dirty White
- Idaho
- Rough Design
- Tell Me That You Love Me
- Don't Let It Get You
- Oh My Love
- Family Tree
- Night Happens
Music reviews of An Invitation
Music Review: All hinges on what you think of Van Dyke Parks
Rating: 2 Stars
I'm trying to find something positive to say about this album. Inara George's voice is clear and beautiful. I believe she wrote the lyrics, which are also quite good (if sometimes oblique), and some of the melodies are uncommon and intriguing.
That said, the main accompaniment is Van Dyke Parks and his string arrangements. I wont argue with anyone who likes them, but I have to be blunt about my own reaction: the orchestral parts are busy, harmonically dense, the rhythms lope, flit, and lurch uncomfortably without a steady beat, and they basically just dance all over the place, with unrelenting hyperactivity. Not only are the arrangements hyperactive, they seem dynamically constricted. There is a want of pianissimo and fortissimo. Furries of notes and chord changes cannot substitute for dynamic contrasts between loud and soft to add life and drama to the music. I guess this is a factor that doesn't concern Van Dyke Parks.
This album contains a number of good songs (Duet), even beautiful songs (Rough Design), struggling to get out from under the weight of the arrangements.
For me, listening is a fatiguing experience. I loved Inara George's other solo CD, All Rise, and her work with The Bird And The Bee. This is something in another vein altogether. While I do not begrudge the artist an opportunity to stretch and try something new, I can't bring myself to pay for that experimentation when it simply has no appeal for me. So, I'm not buying this, and I would strongly urge people to listen to cuts or sound samples before purchasing, to make sure you really want to pay for 40 minutes of this stuff. If you like it, for whatever reason, great. For me it was something I could endure, with only a few points of enjoyment.
Description of An Invitation
An Invitation is an intimate collaboration between Inara and legendary arranger Van Dyke Parks. The result is a lush, elegant, fully orchestrated song cycle, a catalog of experiences equally inspired by the sophistication of Frank Sinatra and the storied, cinematic wonder of Richard Sherman's oeuvre. Throughout the record, Van Dyke's cerebral (psychedelic, even) arrangements twist the music into multiple directions at once, a swirling canvas suspended over the sonic mantelpiece of Inara's songs, bewitching and perplexing, a truly organic achievement among friends in an era of artificial pleasures.General CDs
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