A little while back a good friend of mine returned from a trip to St. Louis with a banging gift: a clutch of records from Vintage Vinyl. Among the gems that she picked out was this slightly beat up copy of a record by the Dave Brubeck Quartet that I never even knew existed, called “Dave Digs Disney”. On it, tracks like “Heigh-Ho” and “When You Wish Upon A Star” start out with familiar melodies but morph until they are totally unrecognisable, until they sound very specifically like something recorded by the Dave Brubeck Quartet and not remotely like Disney tunes, before effortlessly slipping back into their recognisable selves by songs’ end.
“Dave Digs Disney” is a delightful listen, frankly, one that left me more than receptive to the idea of more Disney covers. Hearing that Brian Wilson was recording an album’s worth of them, I got to thinking that it was going to be a similar affair, more Wilson than Disney. Given how involved and personal Wilson’s “Reimagines Gershwin” was last year, his take on Disney was bound to be worth hearing, right?
Wrong. And immediately so at that: “In The Key Of Disney” opens with a painfully listless take on “The Bare Necessities” that sets the tone for what follows. Wilson’s voice has that certain heaviness to it that he’s been unable to shake off since returning to recording in a solo capacity, but where adventurous melodies and spectacular arrangements distract from that slightly unhappy aspect of his now lengthy comeback on some of his better records, the unrelenting perkiness of the Disney tunes here serve only to highlight it, while the instrumentation feels nothing but strained. Sure, marimbas plonk away, tin-whistles sweep up and down, and Wilson’s backing band ape Beach Boys harmony as well as they ever have, but all of these flourishes feel totally perfunctory. This is Disney with Wilson pasted on top, with no attempt at .
So it’s rough going. The slower numbers come out the least damaged: Wilson’s renditions of “When You Wish Upon A Star” and “Baby Mine” – if you can bear the hokeyness that comes as a given with these songs – are pretty enough, the latter sounding like the kind of doleful ballad that Wilson himself might have penned in his prime. For the most part, though, this record feels completely soulless and unnecessary, entirely designed to leverage the nostalgia value of the release rather than any potential originality. The Disney-Wilson merger makes for a juxtaposition as awkward as the album cover’s imagery is laboured: Mickey. A surfboard. We get it.
But maybe Wilson needed to record an album this safe. He has admitted that revisiting old studio recordings to put together “The SMiLE Sessions” was no mean feat, a process fraught with unwelcome memories. We’ll be reviewing that historical curiosity later this week. Try not listen to “In The Key Of Disney” in the mean time.
