Simon & Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

Best song: For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her

Worst song: The Dangling Conversation

Overall grade: 5

The followup to ‘Sounds of Silence’ saw Simon & Garfunkel able to take more time over the recording process without constant pressure from their record label. Despite this, the record actually has the same number of Paul Simon originals as its predecessor, although less of them are taken straight from ‘The Paul Simon Songbook’ (his first 1963 solo album) this time around. Also, the other two tracks aren’t just simple covers. I’ll talk about them first.

‘Scarborough Fair’ is a traditional folk song – I know that because I used to sing it in my school choir at the age of eleven.  It’s a really pretty, simple little tune, but it would probably sound sparse and underdeveloped if S&G continued it in the same vein as the first verse… luckily, they solve this problem by bringing in a countermelody, which is basically a second song sung at the same time. The second song, ‘Canticle’, is actually yet another ‘Paul Simon Songbook’ outtake, but it has new lyrics. The lyrics appear to be completely unrelated to ‘Scarborough’ but the melodies work excellently together.

The other one is a rendition of the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’, overdubbed with a news broadcast featuring real events from around the time of its recording. You can’t hear the newsreader at first, but he gets louder and louder until he completely overpowers the song. I love the idea, it’s so simple but so clever, a great example of Simon’s satirical social commentary coming out to play.

You can also see this on ‘The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine’, yet to balance these out we have the more personal, introspective songs like ‘Homeward Bound’ and ‘For Emily Whenever I May Find Her’, the latter featuring a practically perfect vocal performance from Art Garfunkel. Sadly, on ‘The Dangling Conversation’ they take all this deep and meaningful stuff a bit too far, with pompous lines about famous poets half their listeners couldn’t name a poem by.

And as if trying to prove that they don’t take absolutely everything seriously, there’s ‘59^th Street Bridge Song’ which is the best song ever written that’s not about anything at all, along with ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or Some Very Long Subtitle That I Cannot Remember) which parodies a bunch of other music of the time, most notably Bob Dylan, but also The Who and the Rolling Stones and others.

I think it’s pretty easy to overlook a lot of this stuff if you’re not listening carefully – until recently I never realised how good half these songs were. Like ‘A Poem on the Underground Wall’, which doesn’t have much of a melody but is still highly listenable for its sleepy, late night atmosphere. But even if you don’t agree that on this album the pair really knew what they were doing and had a point to make, you can just sit back and listen to the way the two voices blend seamlessly together without the need for any studio work or complex instrumentation, because fantastic songwriting aside, isn’t that really their biggest appeal?