When this list goes live, I’ll be watching the Dangler of Conversations in a hockey arena. But let me preserve the following in amber. You won’t find 1975’s Grammy-winning Still Crazy After All These Years. Good songs it’s got, but the arrangements are too damn staid — couldn’t Phoebe Snow sing the rest of the material? I haven’t heard You’re the One (1990 either.
Proof is the bottom line for everyone.
1. Paul Simon (1972)
Turning the bridge over troubled water into chow fun, Simon’s second solo album collects eleven sketches of remarkable perspicuity that adduce what years of overripe recordings with Artie Garfunkel can teach a man with a couple million in the bank and Aretha ringing your bell for material. These days Paul Simon hides in the shadow of Graceland, despite being the home of Wes Anderson chestnut “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” Well, “Congratulations” and “Everything Put Together Falls Apart” await the proper contexts — a gay comedy instead of the usual urban hymn beloved of heterosexual directors of both genders. His wryness earns him Honorary Queer status.
2. The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)
A big deal at the time in the wake of Graceland, forgotten, then championed by my generation, Simon’s use of South American rhythms undergirds a song suite of impeccable formal control; his baby powder voice sounds frightened by the precision of his melodies and couplets. “Can’t Run But” could’ve been on Remain in Light‘s second side between “Seen and Not Seen” and “Listening Wind.” “The Cool, Cool River” shudders whenever Vincent Nguini’s guitar growls its interjections, preparing us for the most forlorn “I believe in the future” in popular song. But he remains curious, ear astir for those spirit voices.
3. Graceland (1986)
All that’s left to say about this touchstone beloved of kids whose road trip listening in Mom and Dad’s sedan also required Steve Winwood tapes, is that the big-shouldered coat — Simon’s uniform in this era — incarnated the high roller aspirations of his characters. Hey, doesn’t he know you from the cinematographer’s party? Rearranging himself in taxis, staring at distant constellations, he’s cad enough to hit on women who think he’s a pretentious sod rhyming institute/astute and dreamer enough to imagine Bakithi Kumalo and his bass make for solid wing men.
4. So Beautiful or So What (2011)
His guitar record, and he’s good — did you know that? The strength of the songs you know.
5. Hearts and Bones (1983)
Most of us approaching the period of the midlife crisis should be so lucky to have Chic soundtracking them, and Chic stuck around despite what their client wore on the album sleeve. When a brief marriage to a Hollywood star fails we hope we can write a testimonial as resonant as the title track. The rest is an eloquent use of space that began in doubt if not panic.
6. There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973)
And he does a lot of rhymin’. “Kodachrome” is his best single that decade, “American Tune” anthemic without getting insistent about it. Of course the album could use Muscles Shoals Rhythm Section all over the place. Imagine Warren Zevon covering “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor.” Or Phoebe Snow.
7. Stranger to Stranger (2016)
“Confident or asshole enough to appropriate embellishments from Clap! Clap! and a pump organ called the Chromelodeon from Harry Patch,” I wrote two years ago, “he flaunts his musical curiosity and accepts his septuagenarian privilege even when the jokes suck (‘Wristband’); hell, he even titles an instrumental after the wife who scored a top ten in 1989 singing from the POV of an idiot. A goal of Simon’s these days, I guess: ‘I don’t worry and I don’t think,’ he sings almost convincingly on “Cool Papa Bell” before resorting to pretty maxims like ‘Every day I’m here I’m grateful.’ Then he mutters, ‘That’s the gist of it.’ Nobody but Simon would have added this line. Also: he likes angels.
Humanizing The Vacuum 