{"id":42455,"date":"2011-10-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/songwriter\/"},"modified":"2011-10-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T00:00:00","slug":"songwriter","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/songwriter\/","title":{"rendered":"Songwriter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Close on the heels of his 70th birthday, Paul Simon has released a personally chosen set of songs spanning his 50+ year career, two discs aptly named Songwriter. <\/i>Simon has a legacy as one of the finest songwriters of the 20th<\/sup> century, and the time has seen him grow from a folk pioneer to a mercurial, inquisitive student of melody and lyric. <\/p>\n

Simon chooses a nice mix of well known and lesser-known material, combining his original recordings with a few covers and alternate versions. The focus here is not to create a greatest hit collection (there plenty of those already), though it does contain many familiar hits from his solo work and the Simon & Garfunkel years.\u00a0 Disc one covers his career from its beginnings in the \u201860s through his 1986 album Graceland<\/i>. <\/p>\n

He opens the first disc with one of his most venerable tracks, the iconic \u201cSound Of Silence,\u201d recorded live in 2011. The spare arrangement is almost spoken word, reducing the familiar hypnotic melody to its barest essentials on a single acoustic guitar. The stripped-down version puts the focus on the brooding lyrics, nicely setting the stage for an exploration of Simon’s brilliant musical poetry. If \u201cSound Of Silence\u201d is his most iconic song, \u201cBridge Over Troubled Water\u201d comes a close second. The version of \u201cBridge\u201d here features not Simon, but Aretha Franklin backed by Billy Preston doing a fantastic gospel arrangement.\u00a0 Familiar selections such as \u201cKodachrome\u201d and \u201cLate In The Evening\u201d are accompanied by some lesser known but essential Simon tracks. The mellow tale of love gone to rust in \u201cTrain In The Distance\u201d is especially welcome as is the quirky tale of love and doo-wop music, (and one of the best song titles ever) \u201cRenee And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War\u201d.<\/p>\n

Disc two spans his 1990 album Rhythm Of The Saints<\/i> to the present, including his 2011 studio release \u201cSo Beautiful, Or So What.\u201d The more enigmatic of the two discs, many of the songs here traveled under the radar. His original musical play \u201cThe Capeman\u201d provide two tracks that fall a bit flat performed by Simon. I would have liked to hear the ensemble recordings of these personally. His under appreciated 2005 release \u201cSurprise\u201d provided my favorite track on disc two, the bubbly \u201cLook At That.\u201d Disc two is nicely bookended with Latin flavored tracks from \u201cRhythm Of The Saints,\u201d closing with the title track from his latest release. \u201cSo Beautiful\u201d is an amazing return to the spotlight for Simon, and it shows that his turn of phrase has not lost a bit of it’s impact. His words are still powerful and personal. His skill as a composer and arranger are as solid as ever. Songwriter<\/i> is a thoroughly enjoyable trip through Simon’s timeline. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":30781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5719],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-42455","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-paul-simon","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42455"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}