About half-way through last year, I got weirdly obsessed with Simon & Garfunkel during one of the seemingly permanent 20% off sales at JB HiFi. I noticed one of those 5-album packs of Art Garfunkel's output so grabbed it. This is his debut solo album.
Paul Simon was the main songwriter in S&G. For his solo debut, Art has tackled various cover songs with all of the production and money having been in a hugely popular band can allow. He's working with long time S&G producer Roy Halee and uses a long list of session musos.
The songs are... mostly flat. Art's voice is as angelic as ever, but none of the spunk of S&G is present. None of the randomly funky bass or excellent guitar riffage. Nothing is horrible, but rarely do I find any of it interesting. It's all the kind of music I'd expect over the credits of a 70s TV show or movie.
The first track Travelling Boy descends into a pretty cool guitar solo, but the unfortunate love of the 70s, the casio keyboard, ruins the outro, as it does on the final song, Another Lullaby. I Shall Sing, with its latin beat, could almost be an outtake from Paul Simon's Graceland, while I'm surprised to hear Simon singing backing on Down In The Willow Garden, one of the least interesting tracks in a pile of uninteresting.
I like the excessive over-dub sounding backing instrumentation on Mary Was An Only Child, it's almost avant-garde at times, but not quite Cecilia.
And obviously most missing are the effortless harmonies that made S&G so great. It's unfair to compare I suppose, but it's all I can do. The album, and indeed Garfunkel's entire solo career, serves fans who adore his voice, the Bridge Over Troubled Water fans, who want to hear his take on all-the-things, but for me, it's an emotionless experience.
3/10
