And so, evidently, is Paul Simon.
The notion of albums—a set of songs meant to be listened to in a single stretch—was introduced to rock sometime in the mid-sixties after the 45 had been king for 10-plus years. Then after a respectable 35-year run for the album, the single track (or more accurately, mp3s) took over again, displacing albums with iTunes mixes. I can’t remember the last time I purposely played an album all the way through. And then listened to it again.
I like Paul Simon fine. His Simon & Garfunkel stuff is a guilty pleasure. (I love it, but yeah, it’s a little precious, and the emo acts who updated the Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme sound—do it much better.) His run of early ’70s hits are super catchy, and I actually like that run in the late ’70s around One Trick Pony. Then there’s Graceland in the mid-’80s. Not my thing at the time, but an undeniable masterpiece.
I haven’t paid attention to anything he’s done since. I think he wrote a Broadway musical.
But whoa. Paul Simon, who’ll turn 70 later this year, just released an album I cannot stop listening to. He’s still got his angelic Everly Brothers voice. And for a concise 38-minute set of masterpiece acoustic guitar-based songwriting, he sings world-music-y folk pop, casually dropping lines such as: “There are galaxies yet to be born, creation is never done.”
Listen to it here. If I get to see him live—he’s touring right now—I’ll be calling out for these songs over the classics.
He’s at the WaMu Theater on April 15th and at Showbox in the Market on April 17th.
