We'll politely accept this invite

Inara George with Van Dyke Parks

An Invitation (Everloving)

ESSENTIAL "Dirty White"

Listening to Inara George's new album, "An Invitation," is like living, for a brief time, in a Mary Poppins world. George, of the indie-pop band the Bird and the Bee, collaborated here with legendary orchestral coordinator Van Dyke Parks. With her lost-in-a-daydream vocals, George is our live-action guide in a fantasy world of watercolor meadows and woods. Channeling Joanna Newsom, who also worked with Parks, George seamlessly weaves the modern with the archaic. The jazzier melodic lines -- flat more than frilly -- are welcome surprises on "Bomb" and "Dirty White." But even in this alternative universe, George could stand to sound more like a flesh-and-blood person with three-dimensional desires and frustrations. "I speak too pleasantly," she muses at one point, correctly. "An Invitation" must have been a fun side project, but it may have all the permanence of the summer breeze it captures so perfectly. [Judy Coleman]