Mendes fragile, soulful in ‘Shawn’

CHVRCHES mix lightness with gloriously dark Singer at 76, not retiring

SBy Mark Kennedy

(Virgin EMI) The month of May is turning into a banner one for album releases from young, good-looking, sensitive singersongwriters blessed with awesome falsettos. First came Charlie Puth and now comes his tour mate Shawn Mendes.

Mendes’ self-titled third album follows the successes of “Handwritten” and “Illuminate,” which both topped the Billboard 200 albums chart. The new one should do that as well, with ease. He deserves it.

Like Puth, Mendes has a knack for pop hooks, but “Shawn Mendes” has a quieter, funkier and more soulful vibe. On the sensitive scale, Mendes might actually beat Puth: The 19-year-old is more introspective, fragile and yearning here than the more cocky Puth’s first-rate “Voicenotes.”

The album opens unconventionally for a pop collection with Mendes fighting depression in the Kings of Leon-sounding rocker “In My Blood” (“Laying on the bathroom floor/Feeling nothing/I’m overwhelmed and insecure”).

Mendes gets in a welcome R&B groove for the lovely, aching “Lost in Japan” and goes on to admit self-consciousness in “Nervous” and vulnerability in “Where Were You in the Morning?” The quirky song “Particular Taste” shows a Mendes ready to experiment with song form — and romantic partners.

He’s unsure of a lover’s commitment on “Mutual” and asks “Why can’t we just get over ourselves?” in the spare “Why.” It might be wise not to irk Mendes, since you might be on the receiving end of a spikey song like “Queen.”

Mendes gets songwriting help from frequent collaborators Teddy Geiger, Scott Harris and Geoff Warburton and perhaps their best song together is the aching “Because I Had You.”

If “Fallin’ All In You” sounds very much like an Ed Sheeran jam that’s because Mendes co-wrote it with Sheeran and Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol. The ballad even has Sheeran’s distinct cadences, but yet, stubbornly, doesn’t really stand out. Two duets — one with Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic and the other with Julia Michaels — also both underwhelm, especially with such strong writers aboard.

That’s certainly not the case when Mendes teams up with Khalid on “Youth,” a stunningly beautiful union of two of the most exciting millennial voices pushing back against the old order, singing “You can’t take my youth away/This soul of mine will never break.”

It’s a song as timely as you can get and a defiant step out of Mendes’ fragile world. But he quickly jumps back into it. It’s a world you’ll enjoy spending time in, too.

CHVRCHES, “Love (Glassnote Records)

In one of those divine twists, two very different artists are offering songs titled “… Plan” this year. You probably know the one by Drake. But there’s also one by the Scottish synth pop

Is Dead” NEW YORK, May 23, (AP): Farewell tours don’t always mean farewell, but are a ripe time for appreciation and appraisal. Paul Simon’s concerts and a new biography offer the opportunity for both.

Simon’s “Homeward Bound” tour began last week in Vancouver and takes him across North America, to Europe and an eventual conclusion with three dates back home in New York City.

Simon, who’s 76, isn’t retiring. He has an album due out this fall and promises he’ll still occasionally appear on stage. Since he started writing songs as a teen-ager, it’s hard to imagine that impulse shutting off forever. He’s done with the idea of long concert tours, though, so if you live in Greensboro, North Carolina, Austin, Texas or Orlando, Florida, and want to see him perform, this is probably it.

The death of his lead guitarist and friend, Vincent N’guini, last December influenced his decision to step away, Simon said in a statement when the tour was announced. (He has declined interview requests).

“Mostly, though, I feel the travel and time away from my wife and family takes a toll that detracts from the joy of playing,” he said.

The set list from the tour’s opener in Vancouver indicates that he’s exploring the breadth of his career — from Simon & Garfunkel favorites like “Mrs. Robinson” and “America” to touchstones from “Graceland” and recent fare “Dazzling Blue” and “Rewrite.” With a 16-piece band, he often searches for new ways to tell familiar stories.

“He was far more a curious musician than a self-congratulatory, self-repeating pop star,” wrote Jon Pareles of The New York Times in his review of opening night.

Simon’s musical restlessness sets him apart from many peers, said Robert Hilburn, author of the just-released book “Paul Simon: The Life.” Simon was interviewed by Hilburn for the book. Many of Simon’s contemporaries aren’t interested in pushing boundaries or have fans who resist if they do. Simon’s last few albums have been adventurous, earning him critical and commercial success.

Many people forget that Simon spent years as a mediocre writer

group CHVRCHES. It may not top the Billboard Hot 100 but it’s still a great, hypnotic gem.

“… Plan” is part of the sonically bright but thematically still gloriously dark “Love Is Dead,” the trio’s third album. Those thick, suffocating blankets of synth from 2013’s “The Bones of What You Believe” have been hacked away, offering a cleaner, lighter and, yes, more commercial sound than even their 2015 breakthrough “Every Open Eye.” searching for pop hits until his breakthrough song, “The Sound of Silence,” Hilburn said.

“Once he became this great songwriter, he realized right away that you’re always in jeopardy,” he said. “There are always these distractions and temptations. He had this determination and intelligence to know that music is the most important thing — that you could never master it and never take it for granted.”

Hilburn believes that the desire to stretch himself musically was the biggest factor in Simon’s break with partner Art Garfunkel in 1970, not the famous prickly relationship between the childhood chums. “If he hadn’t left Simon & Garfunkel, he’d have burned out like all the others,” Hilburn said.

The two are more distant than ever after an unpleasant end to the “Old Friends” tour in 2012, and Garfunkel declined requests to be interviewed for Hilburn’s biography. So it would be wise not to expect another reunion soon.

For the book, Hilburn pressed Simon to reveal details of the 2014 incident where Simon and his wife, Edie Brickell, were arrested on disorderly conduct charges for a fight at their Connecticut home. Without setting the record straight, it would remain a defining image of their marriage, he argued. Simon refused; instead, a photo of him and Brickell later renewing their vows at their Montauk, New York, home is in the book, standing as Simon’s testimony to the endurance of their relationship.

Even though two of his three wives — Brickell and Carrie Fisher — were celebrities in their own right when they were married, Simon has generally been reluctant to feed the media machine. Hilburn believes that has cost him popularity through the years. Instead, people know Simon through his songs, and they’re likely to be remembered long after he’s gone, he said.

In fact, that legacy drives the album he’s been working on for release this fall. He records again some of the compositions he’s particularly proud of that were lost along the way in terms of public attention. One song on the Vancouver playlist, “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War,” is a likely target.

But CHVRCHES have always deceived, offering 1980s-influenced pop with depth. Lyrically, the band is at its best here, exploring man’s inhumanity to man while still making high-energy songs.

Nowhere is that more evident than on the synthesizers-and-drum-fueled “Graves,” with the punch-in-thegut lyrics: “They’re leaving bodies in stairwells/and washing up on the shore/You can look away, while they’re dancing on our graves.” (AP)