While his first album, Song Cycle, might be more historically significant, Discover America has always struck me as Van Dyke Parks’s greatest album, simply for the playful joy that inhabits every moment of its hybrid, pan-generic vision (calypso, R&B, reggae, mariachi — the list goes on). The arrangements are complex without being overbearing or cloying, the female backing singers seem to be having the time of their lives, and Parks’s vocal delivery is perfectly pitched between laconic, whimsical, and wry. It’s also a sharp commentary on colonial and trans-national relations, drawing on Parks’s love of calypso and steel band music. The title’s a giveaway, really, when it comes to thinking about the complex cultural crossovers explored here, Discover America being a late sixties tourist program to try to increase gasoline consumption. Parks’s writing is smart and precise, and his covers of Allen Toussant’s “Occapella” and “Riverboat” (borrowed from Lee Dorsey), and Little Feat’s “Sailin’ Shoes,” are sublime.

– Jon Dale