There goes hymning Simon
New Zealand Listener|June 17-23 2023
Has the veteran singer-songwriter come down with an elegy?
GRAHAM REID
There goes hymning Simon

SEVEN PSALMS, by Paul Simon

Towards the end of Robert Hilburn's chunky 2018 biography of Paul Simon, the singer-songwriter says his next project will be reworking and rerecording some of his lesser-known songs.

His friend, the artist Chuck Close, dismisses the idea: "He'll never finish that album, it won't be challenging enough."

However, Simon - known for stubborn doggedness, as when insisting his Broadway musical The Capeman go ahead despite being clearly doomed as an artistic and commercial failure - did finish that album, In the Blue Light.

Now retired from touring, 81-year-old Simon returns with another self-imposed challenge, this ambitious acoustic album, his first album of new material since 2016's excellent Stranger to Stranger.

Seven Psalms runs as a single 33-minute body of work in movements of The Lord/Love Is Like a Braid/My Professional Opinion/Your Forgiveness/ Trail of Volcanoes/The Sacred Harp/Wait.

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