Paul Simon, "Seven Psalms" (Owl Records/Sony Legacy)
The sounds of silence ring loud and clear on the intensely contemplative "Seven Psalms," Paul Simon's often whisper-soft new album that is not — he maintains — an album in the conventional sense of the word.
Make that hushed and clear.
This seven-song collection revels in melancholic understatement and gentle nuances as the legendary troubadour explores themes of mortality and spirituality, joy and dread, the past and present, the unknown future, and a clock that — for this 81-year-old music legend in the autumn of his years — ticks louder each day.
Billed as a "33-minute, seven-movement composition," "Psalms" was created by Simon to be heard as "a single continuous piece" that "transcends the concept of the 'album'." It was inspired by a dream he had in early 2019 that is described by him later in this article.
Whatever its inspiration, the impermanence of life and the uncertainty of what lies ahead loom large for Simon. "Psalms" captures his restless spirit and introspective mood with masterful restraint and eloquence.
One of the most acclaimed and resourceful singer-songwriters of his generation, Simon counts Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney and Randy Newman among his contemporaries. He has outlived many of his past peers, including Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Laura Nyro, Marvin Gaye, Violeta Parra and George Harrison, one of Simon's periodic collaborators.
A secular Jew, Simon has long sung about matters of faith and transcendence, the scared and the secular. In his classic 1986 song, "The Boy in the Bubble," he exulted: "These are the days of miracle and wonder."
Simon was 44 when "Bubble" came out and had already been an internationally acclaimed troubadour for nearly half his life by that point. His meticulously crafted music drew from sources near and far, foreign and familiar, earthy and exotic.
Boyish and fragile
Today, four decades later, Simon still retains a boyish sense of wonder on parts of "Psalms," while also sounding fragile at times. A veteran observer of the human condition, he appears acutely aware that time is no longer on his side. Although he retired from touring in 2018, Simon does not appear ready to deliver his swan song just yet.
Two years after selling his song catalog in 2021 for a reported $250 million, this 16-time Grammy Award-winner seems more reflective than ever. He also is happy to draw from the early days of his career as a source of new/old musical inspiration.
He was just 23 in 1965 when he learned to play "Anji," an intricate, finger-picked Davy Graham guitar piece now rightly regarded as a classic. The New York-born Simon was working as an obscure solo artist at the time and living in England, where he wrote the future Simon & Garfunkel hit, "Homeward Bound," while waiting for a London-bound train.
"Anji" would later appear as an instrumental interlude at the end of side one on "The Sounds of Silence," Simon & Garfunkel's second album. On "Psalms," it serves as a musical bookend of sorts.
"Anji" anchors three songs, all with the same title and melody. This classical rondo approach serves as a fitting nostalgic tool for the elder Simon to revisit his work as a young musician, while reflecting on the intervening decades and life moments that are either still treasured or fading with the passing of time.
"Memory leaves us," Simon observes on the suitably contemplative "The Lord," which opens "Seven Psalms."
"The Lord" is a recurring presence, literally and figuratively, on "Psalms." A song titled "The Lord" appears three times, anchored by "Anji's" lattice-like guitar figure, but with different verses each time and different musical twists.
That brings the total number of songs to nine, not seven. But — perhaps because two of the three "Lords" are instrumental reprises — Simon counts them as a single composition.
"The Lord is the ocean rising/ The Lord is a terrible swift sword," he warns on the second of the three "Lords" on the album.
"The Lord is my personal joke/ My reflection in my window," Simon muses on the third "My Lord," before playfully referencing his 1975 hit, "Slip Sliding Away" with the line: "The Lord is the coast, the coast is clear/ The path I slip and slide on."
Simon was 58 when his ruminative song "Old" appeared on his "You're the One" album in 2000. "Old" was, he told an interviewer at the time, "about people starting to kid you that you're getting old before you actually are really old, but now I'm actually getting there."
Twenty-three years later, "Old" seems like an almost quaint prelude. Those wanting to hear a more in-depth precursor to "Psalms" can turn to Simon's 2011 album, "So Beautiful or So What," which includes such evocative songs as "Love Is Eternal Sacred Light," "Questions for the Angels" and "Love & Blessings."
"What's beneath the surface, however you may define the surface, that's a crucial part of the songwriting process," Simon told me in a 2006 Union-Tribune interview.
"The way the tracks are built, and the shifts in the color and the rhythm, had an affect upon the writing. So, for me, probably more than for almost all listeners, what's said right beneath the surface is as interesting as what the final layer produces, the final layer being the words ...
"I guess I'm easily bored, so I really try to find a way I can look at the creative process from an angle that is interesting. And it's interesting because it's fresh to me. I don't like doing an imitation of what I do."
Accordingly, "Psalms" is never less than very interesting. But what most distinguishes Simon's latest musical labor of love is how insular it is.
His most recent album, 2018's "Into the Blue Light" — which showcased jazz-based reworkings of 10 of his lesser-known songs — featured nearly 30 musicians. There were 33 on his 2016 album, "Stranger to Stranger."
"Psalms" is a bare-bones affair by comparison.
Simon performs on acoustic and electric guitars, dobro and an array of percussion instruments and keyboards. These include the Chromelodeon and Cloud Chamber Bowls. Both were created by former San Diego composer Harry Partch, who died in 1974 in Encinitas. Many of Partch's otherworldly instruments were featured on Simon's "Stranger to Stranger" album.
But most of these instruments are used so sparingly for texture that they sound almost translucent. And only a handful of other musicians appear on "Psalms" — singer Edie Brickell (who is Simon's wife), percussionist Jamey Haddad, the British vocal octet Voces8, which quietly performs on four songs, and a string quartet, whose delicate filigrees are sublime if underutilized
Intimacy and imperfection
That puts Simon's plaintive singing and guitar work front and center, which is largely to his advantage but sometimes to his detriment.
Lyrics this personal should be presented as directly and free of distraction as possible, the better to let their messages resonate fully. The intimacy and imperfection of Simon's singing is all the more affecting for how unadorned his voice is as he reflects on what he's seen and gazes ahead at a road whose end seems to loom ever closer.
But nearly all of his conversational vocals are delivered within the same relatively narrow dynamic range. By the time Brickell adds welcome counterpoint on the final two selections with her dulcet tones, it feels like a strategic move that could have been more effectively deployed had she been featured earlier — and at least a bit more often — on "Psalms."
Likewise, Bob Sirota's wonderfully sensitive string arrangement on the achingly tender "Your Forgiveness" suggests how the music on this album-that-is-not-an-album could have been enriched if Simon had opted for even a slightly broader musical palette.
Then again, fleshing out these songs may have been at odds with Simon's quest to paint and capture a very specific, dream-like mood.
Witness the airy, tiptoeing instrumentation on "Trail of Volcanoes," which — its title to the contrary — is so subtly rendered it is felt as much as heard. The haunting air of resignation that infuses "Your Forgiveness," a stirring ode to love and life, benefits greatly from Alex Sopp's exquisitely refined flute playing.
While "My Professional Opinion" might sound low-key on almost any other album, its traditional folk-blues guitar progression and Simon's wry lyrics and at least slightly raised-eyebrow singing make it stand out, sonically speaking.
"The Sacred Harp" sounds like a lament, but its lyrics express a couple's love as profoundly and joyously as anything Simon has written. Brickell's luminous singing here elevates the song so deftly that Simon devotes a wonderful line in "The Sacred Harp" to describe it: "Her voice a blend of regional perfumes."
The husband-and-wife musicians again join forces on the next piece, the album-closing "Wait," and it's an emotional and musical highlight of "Psalms."
"Wait, I'm not ready/ I'm just packing my gear," Simon pleads in the opening line, his voice cracking slightly. "Wait, my hand's steady/ My mind is still clear."
Brickell, who at 57 is 24 years younger than her husband, alternates verses with him. And she gets the last word on "Wait" (or, rather, the last verse).
"Life is a meteor/ Let your eyes roam," she sings. "Heaven is beautiful/ It's almost like home/ Children! Get ready/ It's time to come home."
Then, together, the couple sing one concluding word — "Amen" — that speaks volumes.
Simon appears to be welcoming Brickell to the great beyond he assumes he will be the first to reach. She, in turn, appears to be reassuring Simon — with lyrics he wrote for her to sing — that they will be reunited in the ever-after and their love will blossom anew.
This provides an uplifting conclusion to "Psalms," a brave work that Simon almost defiantly presents as a single continuous piece, not an album of songs. To ensure listeners experience it exactly that way, the CD version does not enable fast-forwarding from one song to another.
Simon's message is clear: In music, as in life, it's all or nothing. And on what may or may not be his final work, attentive listening isn't just requested, it's a must.
Paul Simon on 'Seven Psalms'
How did the inspiration come about for "Seven Psalms," Paul Simon's first album of all-new music since 2016's "Stranger to Stranger"? The iconic singer-songwriter answered that question in a filmed preview for "Psalms" that was released last month.
"On January 15th, 2019, I had a dream that said: 'You are working on a piece called "Seven Psalms." ' The dream was so strong that I got up and I wrote it. But I had no idea what that meant. Gradually information would come. I would start to wake up two or three times a week between 3:30 and 5 in the morning, and words would come, I'd write 'em down, then start to put it together.
"I like to work and then discover. Well, it's really interesting. I'm trying all the time to move things in this kind of flow way that puts you in a dream, and I think if you're willing to fall into a dream space, you're willing to let your judgment down.
"This is a journey for me to complete. This whole piece is really an argument I'm having with myself about belief or not."
