The Phantom Tollbooth, October 22, 2000

‘You’re the one’ is to Paul Simon what ‘Time out of mind’ was for Bob Dylan. Not that Simon has the roller coaster of genius and rubbish that Bob Dylan’s recording history is prone to.. For one thing Simon is not quite so prolific. It’s nearly 15 years since ‘Graceland’ perhaps Paul Simon’s finest moment. And there have only been two albums of new songs since then and one of those was the commercially disastrous ‘Songs from The Capeman’, that was probably lost in the barrage of bad reviews for its Broadway stage production.

There are a few similarities between this and Dylan’s most recent release. It is about aging and it is as articulate as this fine songwriter has ever been. It is about identity, past and future. It is about trying to get to heaven before they close the door. It is a 20^th century icon whose choice of career has kept him from realizing that he is as old as your father coming to that very realization.

There are nods back to the South African rhythms of the aforementioned ‘Graceland’, but it’s not quite presented so neat. It’s given a little gentle splash of lemon and lime and some ice that makes the majority of the eleven songs gently float around you. Nowhere more so than in the song called ‘Love’: “We crave it so badly,/ makes you want to laugh out loud when you receive it/ and gobble it up like candy.”

Like most of what this native New Yorker has been doing for years there is no sentimentality but that love we crave gets contextualized into a much bigger picture and the powers of politics and religion get linked with the evil that blights the love: “The price that we pay/ When evil walks the planet/ And love is crushed like clay:/ The master races, the chosen peoples,/ The burning temples, the weeping cathedrals.”

How many love songs include such comment?

Simon uses various styles of song to thread his poetry into and he has that individual quirkiness that so few of his peers have. ‘Darling Lorraine’ takes a leaf from ‘The Capeman’ play and includes conversational sections to highlight the plight of marital struggles. ‘Pigs, sheep and wolves’ is a talky kind of meander, an Animal farm like look at New York City crime, justice and the media. There’s a Buddy Holly riff throughout ‘Old’ which name checks that said late rock’n’roller and suggests that getting old is actually best because the Bible is old and it is the greatest story ever told! To be truthful every song deserves it’s own commentary but that’s a long review.

The climax is a Celtic like dirge that echoes a Daniel Lanois produced U2 type mood and Simple Minds mid ‘80s hit single ‘Belfast child’. It’s a deeply reflective hymn of a contemplative concluding the thesis that he has just so eloquently presented: “I am heading for a place of quiet/ Where the sage and the sweet grass grow/ By a lake of sacred water/ From the mountain’s melted snow.”