Paul Simon: The Studio
Recordings 1972-2000
Rhino 78909
| Musical Performance |
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| Recording Quality |
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 It
would be easy to be cynical about this nine-disc boxed set. In fact, before hearing it, I
kinda wanted to get my critical mojo going, muttering about how this material has
been reissued to death, and how certain major labels seem to go to the same old artists
time after time after time.
That's true, of course, but it's beside the point -- even
more so when you consider that, despite the existence of at least half a dozen
greatest-hits compilations, Simon's early solo material has remained tantalizingly
unremastered.
If you're a fan, you'll want this box; if you're only a
casual fan, you may prefer to wait and cherry-pick among the individual titles when
they’re released separately, which I'm pretty sure they will be -- each is
self-contained in its own DigiPak inside the box. Taken as a whole, however, the material
spread over these nine discs makes a strong case for ranking Paul Simon with Bob Dylan as
both musical gadfly and major musical influence of our times.
I suspect that Simon gets short-changed in that respect
because of his restlessness and musical curiosity. Other than a tendency to take himself a
tad seriously (I'd argue that he's entitled to), it's hard to pin down what makes a song
"a Paul Simon song."
But give the man his props -- he can crystallize a feeling
in a phrase like nobody's business. I find myself muttering lines from his songs almost as
frequently as I do Dylan's -- and unlike with the great Bob, I'm almost always certain of
what Simon meant. And the man has an ear for music genres. From reggae to gospel to
Afropop and samba, he’s managed to incorporate musical elements into his music just
before the general public picked them up on its radar.
In the cases of reggae and Afropop, you could argue that
the reason they appeared on the general public's radar at all was because Simon
incorporated them into massively popular recordings. Of course, it's a chicken-and-egg
situation -- Graceland's popularity was fueled by the incredible virtuosity of its
South African musicians, even as its hooks and lyrics made its township jive hipper than
black turtlenecks.
By pulling all of these styles together, The Studio
Recordings 1972-2000 ultimately impresses more for the consistency of Simon's work
than for anything else. And two things have remained constant: the craft of his
songwriting and his meticulous studio production values.
Leaving aside the excellence of Simon's writing -- which is
hard to do, because this compilation forces you to confront it time and time again -- this
is one of the best-sounding CD sets I've ever heard. A few alternate tracks are included
that are startling because they don't stand up to the studio versions, but nothing here
sounds bad. The range is from very good to wowsa.
Put at least some of that down to engineer and producer Roy
Halee, Simon's longtime producer and engineer (and who recorded Simon & Garfunkel from
the start). If Simon has been an audio perfectionist, he has been egged on by Halee every
step of the way. I mounted a Grado tonearm on Halee's VPI turntable in the mid-1980s, so I
had a chance to speak with him about the superb sound he and Simon had achieved on Graceland
and other discs. But Graceland isn't the biggest audio surprise of Studio
Recordings. That honor would probably have to go to There Goes Rhymin' Simon,
which sounds so relaxed and natural as to sound effortless. The production never calls
attention to itself, and each song sounds as if it couldn't possibly sound any other way
-- the record lives up to Quintilian's dictum that the height of art is to conceal art.
But that's just me -- there are so many sounds to choose
from here, from the samba-inspired clang and rattle of the criminally underrated The
Rhythm of the Saints to the hushed solemnity of Hearts and Bones, which sounds
more like a masterpiece with each passing year.
Reissued to death? The Studio Recordings 1972-2000
makes the case that, no matter how familiar you are with Paul Simon's hits, his work over
the last 30 years is (I can't help myself) uncharted territory. Think of this boxed set
not so much as a treasure map as a treasure chest, filled to the brim with gems.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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