From Amazon.com
Paul Simon could have just as easily padded his retirement staging periodic reunions with former partner Art Garfunkel. Instead, the best evidence for Simon's rewarding artistic restlessness and intensely personal, sometimes prickly creative ethic lies on this 19-track compilation and five-cut bonus live EP. If his solo career's vaunted world music exploits (which stretch from "Me and Julio" to
Graceland's masterful core tracks here) seem overstated, they also sometimes overshadow the hard-won Tin Pan Alley sense of craft that underpins "Kodachrome," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," "Still Crazy," and "Adios Hermanos" from his doo-wop stage tribute,
Capeman. The limited-edition live EP fleshes out the solo résumé with stirring '73 performances of "American Tune" and "Duncan" and revisits '60s glories with a backbeat-pumped, zydeco-inflected take on "Mrs. Robinson" and a "Bridge over Troubled Water" duet with Aaron Neville set against an eerie East Asian-meets-trance arrangement. It's a collection whose musical influences encompass continents, yet it somehow stays true to Simon's New York City heart.
--Jerry McCulley