Paul Simon/TV on the Radio

Although it's not mentioned often, Paul Simon is very hard to write about and over the years Bob Xgau has done a helluva job covering the guy. I think the most rigorous and reliable thumbnail guide out there.

The fundamental snag is that Simon has rigid worshippers of a quantity and dedication that Dylan no longer attracts. (They demand reverent coverage. I read some upstate NY paper's review So B or So W that proposed -- "best since Graceland? Nonsense -- the man has never released a less-than-glorious album" and the base will not complain. Ken Tucker did a perfectly credible but more skeptical and aware-of-retreads review that drew scathing, hang-it-up-and-get-s​omebody-decent-to-wr​ite-reviews sneers. All predictable every time Simon comes out with an album. I was once under heavy pressure to produce as positive a review of The Capeman as possible. That was a struggle.)

Simon has been murmuring in the background my whole musical life. S&G were hearty faves of the Sensitive Set in high school -- when I belatedly heard Dylan, his refusal of
S&G sop clarified my taste for me -- but Paul Simon was clearly not stupid. And that's where Bob turned on the light for the first time with his precise praise of Simon's solo debut -- the key point for me was that, essentially, "this guy knows he's done dumb, pandering stuff before and he's dumping it to get closer to his grown-up perceptions." What was even more bracing a few years later was Bob's killer take-down of Still Crazy After All These Years. I knew the record was getting over-praised -- the concrete was starting to set around the reverence -- but when music buds asked, I couldn't articulate just why. Bob explained: the grown-up Simon had a tendency to disappear up his own whatsis and if you didn't watch him close, he'd start slinging the sop again.

So Bob's cheers for So B or So W has strong cred. I would only add that Phil Ramone has a better sense than anyone else of how to place Simon's voice in relation to music. And does a magic job of eradicating both the singer's vocal limitations and the effects of his age.

Bradley:  Way past the deadline for you, but Wee Hairy Beasties are about the best toddler music going that I know of.  Not necessarily infant music though.

Writerwise I'm shot tonight, which isn't exactly worth reporting but I feel like yammering, and where else? Plans for an elaborate extension of Mike's EW Consumer Guide post had to be scrapped (alas!!) when the task proved far far far too difficult to manage within the span of time left on this post's lifespan. Had all my choices sorted, too. A couple of A+'s, a few As, lotsa A-s, a handful of ***s **s and *s, six choice cuts, and a possible well-meaning dud. The exercise fostered new appreciation for the sheer task the CG must've been each month. As a one-off joke, it wasn't worth the time it would've required. But there's plenty of writing worth writing about on here, which is hardly news.

So I played the PJ Harvey three times. Then with CG on the brain I offhandedly wrote:

seems to now reckon herself part of the grand Eurogal tradition of cultural and aesthetic isolationism, which is a bigger tragedy than whatever she and her chorus are singing about (“Let England Shake”, “The Last Living Rose”) *

Then I immediately concluded that a) I didn't exactly know what I was talking about, and b) the album isn't really * material anyway. To resort to lame-sounding clichés the record has too much work behind it to deserve without further qualification, it's draggy, pretentious, no fun, a huge comedown from the explosive achievements of the first four, which are easier to hear in recollective retrospect. The first song is interesting and enjoyable and the second pleasant. After that I lose it and don't believe I'm missing much by not coming back. Bush & Björk disease; Yokoisms not exactly worthy of Yoko. It's sad she puts none of her previous fire and passion behind a subject she obviously gives a hell of a damn about, and one which I'll never really understand why it motivates so much art, the Death of the Old Country. Grandiose, shallow art for serious-minded, deep people to mull too hard over. Nothing you qualified folk haven't heart before. So those are my kindergarten thoughts on the subject, but I just wanted to establish my place in the anti- camp, where I soundly belong.

PJ Harvey: Let England Shake [Vagrant, 2011]

Jokes help people get through wars too. [letter][symbol]

Now I'm going to stand in the window as the freezing wind blows through my hair and rattle chains real loud until they light the lamps on every distant hill in sight, dipping back inside every few seconds to check on the thawing tilapia filets and tend to the dying fire, because dying fires are more poetic than blazing ones, not to mention flourescent lights. That old inevitable melancholy in a slowburning stargrasping thin wild ascension towards