When Paul Simon released his album In the Blue Light in 2018, it had all the earmarks of a final work. It also came the same year that Simon said he would stop touring, with a show in Corona Park in Flushing Meadows, Queens, in New York, on September 22, 2018 to be his last. He subsequently played in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park at the Outside Lands festival on August 11, 2019, an environmental fundraiser that took place over three days and mostly featured newer artists and that on the 10th also featured Simon’s wife’s band Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians.
This new album, a very short, seven-song, mostly acoustic offering, also feels like it’s the last from Simon. The album’s lyrics reflect the feelings of someone looking back on their life, but who also feels like they have a lot more life to live. The album is also very much a prayer or meditation on spiritual salvation.
The mostly acoustic songs have faint echoes of Simon’s more folky works with Art Garfunkel in the 1960s and on his first solo albums in the early ’70s. But this is not a nostalgia show. The sounds and musical explorations here are fresh and new, albeit somber. Also of interest is the song “The Lord,” which appears as three separate songs and becomes a repeating musical and mostly lyrical motif.
Simon’s wife Edie Brickell duets with him on “The Sacred Harp” and “Wait.” And while the album has a very sparse acoustic feel, Simon plays five different guitars, a varied list of percussion, and three different keyboards. Jamey Haddad contributes various instruments, Voces8 also contribute on vocals, and five other artists comprise an orchestral quintet. The subtlety with which all of these instruments and voices are integrated is tasteful and refreshing.
With each album Simon had made as a solo artist, his unmistakable, singular sound and style are evident, but there is always something new we’ve never heard before from him. While Simon rightfully is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of the rock era, with the emphasis being mostly on his rich, poetic lyrics, he is an instrumental and sound explorer. That side of him is fully realized on this album.
Simon himself probably envisioned this to be his last album. However, his endless creative musical mind may not be able to rest and he may just have more music to share with the world ahead. Paul Simon: still creative after all these years.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
