Disc of the day
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
Features Disc of the day
Simon & Garfunkel
Sounds Of Silence
(Columbia, 1966)
Two-man choir wrap up warm, but dispense with seasonal empathy.
It’s the scarves that give it away. And the way Art and Paul are seen legging it down the road, in search of digs with a log fire and a warm bluestocking. Accordingly, Sounds Of Silence is full of cold sunlight and a quality of crispness, aloneness and alienation (albeit the choosy, slightly superior alienation of the undergraduate) that make it perfect, in the words of the resounding I Am A Rock, for a winter’s day in deep and dark December. In Dylan/Cash producer Bob Johnston’s musical womb, S&G turn their collars to the cold and damp, a seasonal choir of two. Acoustic guitars make a thorny bed and the odd augmentation (a trumpet here, a harpsichord there) offers cold comfort. Simon the writer is distracted, diffused – the warmer feelings smothered, self-sabotaged or in exile, in England where his heart lies. And while some of these songs are epic, they are somehow also parsimonious (the title track feels like an opera, but it’s only 3.05), as if Simon is loath to give everything he’s got, and in truth the hotter-blooded songs – the off-the-peg folk-rock of Somewhere They Can’t Find Me and We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Goin’ – are the least convincing. That’s Simon for you – no warmer now than he was at 20, and somehow most at home shrouded in a New York winter, or lashed by sleet on Widnes station platform, surrounded by silence.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 01/01/2009
Further Listening
Simon & Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme (Columbia, 1967)
Leonard Cohen – Songs Of Leonard Cohen (Columbia, 1967)
Previous Disc of the day
-
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
6:00 AM GMT 20/11/2009
-
-
Isley Brothers - The Brothers: Isley
The Cincinnati siblings bed into their heavy period.
6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2009
-
Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The trumpeter's most soulful excursion entrances MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 16/11/2009
-
-
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
Comment on this post