Certainly to the general qualities of Simon & Garfunkel I need waste no more words; ie directly to the individual aspects of this world-class album: The prelude song "Scarborough Fair / Canticle", consisting of two superimposed added traditionals from the UK, boasts a peculiar atmosphere, the result of the merger of buttery soft sound (Artie's choirboy voice and Simon's bright guitar sounds) and a hard bass line and a? harpsichord / spinet? is generated. The overall impression of this 3rd album by the New York duo lives roughly expressed by two "types" of Songs: On the one hand loose-fluffy sing-along tunes like "Feelin 'Groovy" "Cloudy" or "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" whose texts but are less easy or at least have serious backgrounds; and on the other hand very sentimental pieces like "Homeward Bound", "The dangling conversation" and my absolute favorite song of this album "For Emiliy, Whenever I May Find Her". The thought-provoking sound experiment "7 O'Clock News / Silent Night" (Silent Night, Holy Night) and the musical 2 minute gag "A simple desultory philippic" would be as individual songs hardly noticed, but the album very nicely round off and make the difference between such great albums and great albums, in which instead of such things mediocre imitation versions stronger songs are used to zusammenzubekommen enough song material from. Such something but never encountered with Simon & Garfunkel, so I can only say that every music lover who is willing also to more frequent, closer listening, you'll love this album.
