This is a beautiful set of songs, revisits to previous works, most noticeable for the pristine sweet vocal of Simon that anchors them all to a strong sense of the familiar, and the changes from the originals [those I could claim to recall/know well] where light orchestrations to jazz punches and jovialities adorn them.
Darling Lorraine
is gorgeous, its plaintive narrative wrapped in guitar workings by Bill Frisell
and Vincent Nguini. Opener One Man’s
Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor is a perfect gentle blues stomp, Simon’s
vocal on a slight echo and another talking vocal response repeating, Wynton
Marsalis’ jazzy surround buffing [as it also does rousingly on Pigs, Sheep and Wolves]. Can’t Run Yet introduces the first of
the foregrounded orchestrations by yMusic – delightful dancing
instrumentations: I can’t run but I can
walk much faster than this from 1990’s The
Rhythm of the Saints sounding now like a light-hearted commentary on
ageing. With How the Heart Approaches
What It Yearns, the nightclub jazz gives the songs its full reflective sense.
The paean to doo wop and surrealist painters, René and Georgette Magritte
with Their Dog after the War is
the song most familiar to me on this album and it gets an orchestral sweep here
like filmic nostalgia – gorgeous again; this is followed by The Teacher with fine saxophone spots by
Joe Lovano.
A song most morphed
to difference for these ears is the penultimate Some Folks Lives Roll Easy as it is immersed in a jazz bowl with
rolling piano and saxophone strains swirling the mix, some mild discordant notes
sending signals across the memorable melody we just hear – Simon’s singing the
one powerful constant. Closer Questions
for the Angels is a lusher version, continuing sublime.
The album is, as I write, being streamed here.
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