Van Dyke Parks is best known for writing the lyrics to a certain classic by the Beach Boys, and as an arranger, composer and original American eccentric — and that’s not even the half of it. His first arranging job was on _The Jungle Book_ (where his contribution, "The Bare Necessities," scooped an Academy Award nomination); he once sang "Stille Nacht" to Einstein; and back in the '70s he started the world's first record-company video department, at Warner Bros. This dynamo of expressive, idiosyncratic musical ideas shows no sign of running out of juice. In recent years he’s woven his expressive arrangements around the music of Rufus Wainwright, St. Etienne, and Joanna Newsom, for whom he orchestrated her second album, 2006's _Ys_. Parks' music, by turns elegiac and psychedelic, stretches back into the bygone age of a lost America while bursting into the wide-open plains of whatever he chooses to do next.
