Looking backward and forward all at once
PAUL SIMON “IN THE BLUE LIGHT” (LEGACY/SONY)
Last year, Paul Simon finally sat down with a biographer for an eponymous book subtitled “The Life.” Later this month, Paul Simon will play the final show of his final tour. Now, Paul Simon has released what he tells us will be his final album.
“I’m finished writing music,” he told NPR. After completing 2016’s underappreciated “Stranger to Stranger” album (his best record in 25 years, to this critic’s ears), he says, “I literally felt like a switch clicked and said, ‘I’m finished.’”
That’s why “In the Blue Light” finds Simon recasting earlier songs — though not the ones you might be hoping to hear. These are deep cuts, many from albums that never got much play (like 2000’s “You’re the One”). There’s no “Graceland” here. In fact, there’s only one track here that has ever made a greatest-hits comp — and “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War” was never what anyone considered to be a hit.
“In the Blue Light” is not a collection of songs about mortality or finality of any kind; these tracks seem to be selected simply because Simon wanted to shine a little more light on them. In some cases, he wanted to explore different musical terrain than the original, like 1990’s “Can’t Run But,” originally driven by Brazilian percussion, now recast for the string section, in an arrangement by The National’s Bryce Dessner. Simon has always employed jazz players, but here he gets some real heavyweights: drummer Jack DeJohnette, guitarist Bill Frisell and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis; the latter leads a rollicking and raw New Orleans take on the 2000 song “Pigs, Sheep and Wolves,” while pianist Sullivan Fortner transforms 1975’s “Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy.”
The only other artist of Simon’s generation to recast their own songbook in this way is Joni Mitchell, who similarly unearthed overlooked tracks, largely from later in her career, for reinterpretation on 2002’s “Travelogue.” For both artists, it’s a way of looking backward and forward at the same time. At the time, Mitchell declared “Travelogue” her final album. Five years later, inspired by an adaptation of her work by the Alberta Ballet, she wrote 10 new songs. If anyone from the Alberta Ballet is reading this, you might want to give Paul Simon a call in a few years and see what he says. Never say never again.
Stream: “Can’t Run But,” “Some Folks’ Lives Run Easy,” “Pigs, Sheep and Wolves”
LA FORCE “LA FORCE” (ARTS AND CRAFTS)
Ariel Engle made my favourite record of 2013, “In the Pines,” as one-half of the duo AroarA. Five years later, on her debut as La Force, Engle has once again announced herself as a major talent — and this time it’s entirely on her own.
In the interim, she and her friends Leslie Feist and Snowblink’s Daniela Gesundheit formed a trio called Hydra, mainly as a social club with which Engle could play summer festivals with her newborn in tow. She then followed Feist into the latest incarnation of Broken Social Scene; Engle joined the already-crowded band on their comeback record, 2017’s “Hug of Thunder,” and easily carved out her own space beside the starpower of Feist and Emily Haines. Broken Social Scene also features Andrew Whiteman, who was not only Engle’s partner in AroarA, but offstage as well. He co-wrote the music for La Force, but this is her project. She’s more than ready for the full spotlight.
For starters, she’s an arresting vocalist, every bit as compelling as her more famous friends. (The sole distraction on the album is on “Upside Down Wolf,” where she sounds remarkably like Cat Power — for an artist whose voice is so otherwise distinctive, this presumably accidental homage is somewhat jarring. It’s still a great song, though.) Her melodies are lovely, often based — as the best folk songs are — on as few chords as possible, if not just a plain drone (like the opener, “The Tide”).
But where Engle truly shines is in her rhythm: not just in the live and/or electronic percussion behind her, but in the role that every instrument plays on this record, starting with her own guitar playing. Latin rhythms often percolate underneath, not always in recognizable ways, though the bossa nova vibe of “Mama Papa” is undeniable. The overall production esthetic is that of slick, art-rock torch music with more than a few nods to ’80s new wave (see the redundantly titled “Epistolary Love Letter”), with thoroughly modern technology; there’s nothing retro here, other than a sheer devotion to craft. This is an artist who could easily pivot in any which way: into darker corners, into sunnier settings, anywhere in the world.
Even though all her other projects have been with dear friends and loved ones, once this record makes the rounds, Ariel Engle’s own work will never be seen as an adjunct to someone else. Viva La Force!
Stream: “The Tide,” “TBT,” “Lucky One”