234 - Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends

[csberry]

Bookends is a VERY short album (just under 30 minutes). The first half follows a concept and is bookended by its own short theme. The songs between the two themes provide an overview of life - from youth to old age.
The biggest surprise to me when listening to this album is the experimentation with sound - found sound, distorted synths (configured by Bob Moog, himself!), soft/loud dynamics. Folk music is first and foremost about the lyrics and then usually vocal harmonies; studio experimentation could be argued to be counter to what "folk" music is. But Bookends is very obviously an exercise in finding studio perfection. You can hear it. You don't HAVE to read how they worked for 50 hours in the studio to complete the recording of "Punky's Dilemma" to know there was a lot of time spent getting the songs to sound how they do on this album.

However, don't interpret all of that time in the studio as an indication that the songs are packed with tons of sound, layers and layers of instruments, or otherwise crammed with everything they recorded. There is a great amount of space and subtlety in these songs. None of the flourishes are overwrought, nor do they compete with the melody and emotional delicateness of the vocals. This was studio time working on perfection through craftmanship, not addition.

My primary problem with Bookends is that although so much work went into producing this album, there are little things that gnaw at me. The Bookends concept is only on one side of the album with the second half being a collection of songs written for The Graduate soundtrack. Should I think of the album being named after a "Bookends Suite" on side 1 instead of thinking of "bookends" being an album concept at all? Couldn't "Mrs. Robinson" or "Fakin' It" fit into the Bookends concept? Did Paul and Art waste their studio time and couldn't complete their concept because of label desire to roll the album out? The Bookends theme songs are really low in the mix and I wished the theme could have stood out more since I'm not about to flip the record over when the end theme comes on so quietly.

Songs I Knew I liked: "America" and "Mrs. Robinson" (Oh, sorry, but I heard the Bangles' cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter" first and never have been interested in the original.)

Songs I Now Like: "Save the Life of My Child," "Overs," and "Fakin' It"

Songs I Can Go the Rest of My Life Never Hearing Again: "Voices of Old People" - I won't skip it when listening to the album as a whole, though.