Pitchfork

Photo by Anoulay Tsai

Those who thought Jarvis Cocker was nutty after seeing the odd assortment of acts he enlisted to play this year's Meltdown Festival, taking place June 16-23 at London's Southbank Centre, would do best to recalibrate their wtf meters, because this thing just got weirder by a factor of 10^yogurt factorial (or something).

Close readers of the Meltdown website may have noticed the "Forest of No Return" event on June 17, described thusly: "Jarvis teams up with the legend of the tribute concert, Hal Willner, to perform reworked versions of classic songs from Disney. Expect to hear tracks which take you back to your childhood from films such as Dumbo, Mary Poppins, and Pinocchio, all sung by very special guests."

Those eagle-eyed readers even may have paused to think about how weird it would to be to have Jarvis Cocker serenade them with Disney tunes. But the real mind fryer comes with the more recent announcement (via The Times) that some of those special guests are Nick Cave, Pete Doherty, Beth Orton, Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry, Pogues croaker Shane MacGowan, and Baaba Maal, with the score arranged by Van Dyke Parks.

Um...cool, we guess??

We seriously don't even know what to say in the face of such an arbitrary combination of personalities collaborating to sing songs from Dumbo. And yes, provided he doesn't land in jail again, Pete Doherty will be performing "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins.

The rest of the Meltdown Festival, which suddenly makes way more sense than before, includes performances by Motörhead, Sunn O))), the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Stooges, Motorhead, Devo, the Pastels, Optimo DJs, Roky Erickson, Clinic, Scout Niblett, Melanie, and Jarvis himself. Also, a band that performs TV show theme songs. Why not?