I’m afraid I was a bit harsh in my description of Paul Simon’s Songs From The Capeman yesterday. While it was certainly a letdown following a seven year wait after his two best albums, and it’s something of a half-baked affair, it isn’t without special moments.
If I hadn’t already posted the wonderfully profane centerpiece track, ‘The Vampires,’ I wouldn’t be able to resist highlighting it on Christmas morning. That song alone is worth the price of the Capeman album.
The seven years between The Rhythm of the Saints and Paul Simon’s next studio album felt like an eternity. Following the one-two punch of Graceland and Rhythm, I was primed for whatever he would come up with next and had to just wait and wait and wait.
In the days before the ubiquity of the Internet — before Twitter and official artist websites — it was hard to know what a musician was up to. It turns out that Simon spent much of that seven-year span researching and writing a Broadway musical called The Capeman about a Puerto Rican gang-banger in New York who turned his life around in prison.
Following the release of The Rhythm of the Saints, my family would debate whether this or Graceland was his greatest album.
Initially I sided with Rhythm, citing its earthy, exotic flavors and the way it turned world music into gorgeous pop. Eventually I came back around to Graceland‘s unique tour of South Africa via the Upper West Side. But there is no loser in that battle.
It’s hard to imagine a tougher act to follow than Paul Simon’s Graceland, but four years after that album’s release, he put out an album that can reasonably be called its equal.
1990’s The Rhythm of the Saints doubled down on the exotic rhythms of its predecessor, with Simon looking to South America rather than Africa for the rich percussion over which he spun his melodies. The album sounds as if it were recorded in the crowded streets of a Brazilian town (and in the case of some songs, it was).
Paul Simon’s Graceland is famous for its blend of Simon’s signature pop sensibility with the sounds of South African music, including the a capella work of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Simon was accused of supporting apartheid by breaking a cultural embargo but the United Nations supported him.
The South African influence is certainly heard all over Graceland, but it’s easy to forget that Simon spins off in other directions, particularly at the end of the album.
Meet Me In Montauk 