Simon has long been driven by a desire to challenge expectations, annotating his words or retracting them as soon as we’ve absorbed them. The restraint is the point just as he’s found inspiration in wide-ranging rhythms and textures from around the world, he now seems thrilled by just how much quiet he can conjure. With only a few instrumental accompaniments (strings, flute, an instrument called “theorbo”) and guest vocals from Edie Brickell and British a cappella group Voces8, it is easily the most solitary record Simon has made since his early solo work. The effect is jarring, adding an eerie sense of dynamics, like the dreams where you try to raise your voice but can’t make a sound. Instead we get a quick blast of harmonica and a low, grinding drone-as if a country ensemble were passing in a slow-moving truck. Here is where we might expect the orchestra to come in-or, you know, the djembe or jazz band or choir. There’s a bluesy movement titled “My Professional Opinion,” in which Simon assumes the role of the wise old poet mulling over his weighty subject matter eventually he cracks a joke about cows and cuts through the austerity like a nervous host gathering guests from the funeral to the afterparty: “What in the world are we whispering for?” But that characterization belies how singular, surreal, and occasionally funny Seven Psalms can be. “It seems to me we’re all walking down the same road to wherever it ends,” he observes in “Trail of Volcanoes,” which extends a dreamlike narrative about refugees and hitchhikers, blended with Simon’s own autobiography.įrom this vantage, Seven Psalms might initially scan as another wistful, self-referential entry in the growing canon of late-era releases from master songwriters contemplating the end of their journeys. Other times he aims for a more idiomatic, empathetic perspective on the trajectory of modern life. “The COVID virus is the Lord,” he tells us, more than once, suggesting an Old Testament understanding of the divine. Within the conceptual framework, Simon tries his hand at modernizing the language of King David. (On streaming services, it plays as one unbroken track, despite being separated into seven movements with distinct titles in the liner notes.) Never one to back away from a mysterious creative impulse, he studied the psalms of King David and began chipping away at an ambitious project that he is adamant listeners approach as a single composition. “I thought: I’m not sure I even know what a psalm is,” he confessed. The way Simon tells it, he was gearing up for retirement, having performed what was billed as his last concert, when he woke from a dream with an imperative to write something called Seven Psalms. “I lived a life of pleasant sorrows,” he sings in one of the most memorable lines, “until the real deal came.” For most of the project’s 33-minute runtime, it’s just Simon’s near-whisper and his acoustic guitar, fingerpicking his way through a spare, dewy landscape. The quiet is arresting, almost uncanny-the sound of venturing into the backyard in the early morning after a long night of rain. On the 81-year-old’s latest record, Seven Psalms, he silences his surroundings.
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