Orange Crate Art redux

The Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson album Orange Crate Art, recorded in 1995, has now been reissued in 2-CD and 2-LP editions by Omnivore Recordings. I got my copy of the 2-CD set yesterday and listened all the way through over two days. The original twelve tracks, remastered, are newly vivid, like paintings after restoration. The standout among the three bonus tracks is “What a Wonderful World” — you can hear Brian giving his all, and the result is deeply affecting. The instrumental versions of the original tracks reveal countless details; I’d point to “Summer in Monterey” and “My Jeanine” as particularly great examples of Van Dyke’s art as composer and arranger. Oh, and “Orange Crate Art.”

Van Dyke is a friend, and I’m hardly an objective pair of ears. But I think the Omnivore description — “sounds like nothing before or since” — is objectively accurate. Orange Crate Art is music of no time and for all time.

Related reading
All OCA BW and VDP posts (Pinboard)