In interviews, Van Dyke Parks has been dismissive of most of his third album, The Clang of the Yankee Reaper, telling Taylor Parkes that it was a “brain dead album” recorded at “the nadir of my entire life.” He certainly was dealing with some heavy things at the time – loss, grief, divorce – but he’s harsh on an album that features a song as deeply felt, and gorgeously drawn, as “The Clang of the Yankee Reaper” itself, one of Parks’s most artful explorations of what popular song can do. The rest of the album is made up of interpretation – a number of calypso songs get the Parks treatment, which would be no surprise to anyone who heard this album’s predecessor, Discover America, or Parks’s discussions of calypso as one of his favourite art forms. He’s faithful to the songs, by great artists like Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener, and Sandpebbles Of Barbados, while adding the richly surreal touch that Parks had, by this point, mastered. The Clang of the Yankee Reaper is far more than just a historical curio.