AAJ Review: Paul Simon, The Complete Albums Collection

[jkelman]

My review of Paul Simon's The Complete Albums Collection, today at All About Jazz.

If the history books were to be closed on singer/songwriter Paul Simon's career today, he'd have already left a legacy more than sufficient to ensure a substantial chapter. While other emergent songwriters of his day—Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Randy Newman amongst them—have clearly evolved over the years, there's been an underlying approach that's remained consistent across, in many cases, half a century. That's not to dismiss or denigrate these icons of song, only to say that Simon has emerged as a songwriter who has not just grown as a wordsmith and composer of catchy, memorable music (as they all have); he's the only one to have looked at the world around him, studying and subsuming advancing technology, diverse genres and, perhaps most importantly, the music of other cultures. It's a mindset Simon shares with the slightly younger British songwriter Peter Gabriel—despite their being completely different in their approaches—not just incorporating these diverse and sometimes disparate concepts into his music but, in the case of pan-cultural concerns, actually locating and working with many of the musicians he studied.

Nowhere is this clearer than on The Complete Albums Collection, which collects almost every album Simon has released, starting with 1965's The Paul Simon Songbook (Columbia, 1965) through to his most recent studio record, So Beautiful Or So What (Hear Music, 2011). Only the two-CD/1-DVD Live in New York City (Hear Music, 2012), culled from the limited tour Simon launched in support of So Beautiful, is omitted. Over the course of 46 years, The Complete Albums Collection follows Simon as he moves from acoustic guitar-slinging folk singer to jazz-informed popster, African and Brazilian-tinged world traveler, electro-centric explorer and, finally, consolidator of everything that came before.


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[No Pride]

I rarely buy boxsets; I generally don't have that much money to spare on one band/artist in one fell swoop. But if I did, I think I'd get this one, even though I already have 5 of those albums. I always dug Paul Simon; great tunesmith, one of my favorite lyricists and there's something about his voice that I always found to be soothing.

[jkelman]

I rarely buy boxsets; I generally don't have that much money to spare on one band/artist in one fell swoop. But if I did, I think I'd get this one, even though I already have 5 of those albums. I always dug Paul Simon; great tunesmith, one of my favorite lyricists and there's something about his voice that I always found to be soothing.

This really is worth it. Other than Songs from The Capeman and a little bit Hearts and Bones, everyone's a winner.

[JIF]

I have the complete albums collections of BOC, Kansas, and Judas Priest. So, I might just this.

[Oreb]

The Rhythm of the Saints is one of my personal top 10 albums ever made. A song-cycle that I find more and more resonance with as the years pass.

Nothing else he has done reaches that level for me, but there is certainly wonderful stuff scattered on his other records.