125. Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends (April 1968)

1. Bookends Theme

2. Save the Life of My Child

3. America*

4. Overs

5. Voices of Old People

6. Old Friends

7. Bookends Theme

8. Fakin' It

9. Punky's Dilemma

10. Mrs. Robinson*

11. A Hazy Shade of Winter

12. At the Zoo*

A-

More Simon & Garfunkel, which is always nice. Of course, it's 1968, so Bookends is a concept album. Thankfully it's a concept album in the sense of side one being a series of standalone songs loosely connected by theme (the cradle to the grave), which is a relief. And what songs! The obvious standout is "America", a truly beautiful song about a pair of lovers who decide to hit the road and travel around the country in search of some sort of vague ideal, gradually becoming disillusioned on one level while maturing and coming to a greater sense of understanding on another. Which sounds very heavy, but it's also a gorgeous and catchy piece of music. Would that other "intellectual" bands would learn from S&G's example. 

Really, though, all the tracks on side one are good. Although I was a little worried by the overt Sgt Peppersisms of "Save the Life of My Child". It's a bleak, heavy song loaded with social commentary, and it was wise to open the album with it, because it simply would not fit anywhere else. The rest of the songs on side one are pretty, melancholy folk-rock numbers, with the exception of the sound collage "Voices of Old People", which adds a bit of depth and "high art" to the proceedings. "Old Friends" is a particularly affecting song, being about what it says on the tin.

Side two is, in Simon's own view, just a collection of leftovers. When your collection of leftovers includes a song as brilliant as "Mrs. Robinson", you know you're a cut above. That said, I tend to agree with him. The other songs are musically pleasant enough, but kind of a wash lyrically, and I don't much care for the psychedelic rocker "Hazy Shade of Winter", which doesn't really fit on this album. But then there's "At the Zoo", a hilarious and catchy piece likening the world to a menagerie, in which we learn that giraffes are insincere and the zookeeper is a little too fond of rum. It's a pretty fun song. 

So this is an impressive, if uneven, album. What's really impressive is that the duo still had their masterpiece in them - the wall-to-wall brilliant Bridge Over Troubled Water. But we won't be getting to that for a while. In the meantime, Bookends does fine.