Simon begins the album in the most casual tone. Over his cool, precise and rhythmically flexible guitar picking, he sings, “I’ve been thinking about the Great Emigration.”
Almost immediately, it becomes clear that the transition is from life to death, a transition the singer prepares herself for. He thinks about time, love, culture, family, music, eternity, and God, and tries to balance things like skepticism and faith. “I have reason to doubt/White light eases the pain,” Simon sings on “Your Forgiveness.” “Two billion heartbeats gone / Or will it all start again?”
Simon’s songwriting is by no means religious. Over the years he has incorporated gospel music into songs such as: “Bridge over Difficult Water” and “Love me like a rock” Bringing religious imagery into secular relationships, his 2011 album So Beautiful or So What contained touches of Christian imagery, but was also highly imaginative. . “Afterlife” As a final bureaucracy, arrivals have to “fill out a form first/then wait in line.”
The “Seven Psalms” are more humble and awe-inspiring. That refrain goes back to the album’s opening song, “The Lord,” followed by variations of it. Like the psalms of the Bible (which states that the psalms were songs, as Simon states in “The Sacred Harp”), Simon is both amazing and terrible, both protector and destroyer. , portrays the sometimes benevolent, sometimes furious Lord in a thorough manner. The Lord is “a meal to the poorest and a welcome door to the stranger,” sings Simon. He then names his 21st century crisis. “The novel coronavirus is the Lord/The Lord is the rising sea.”
Much of the music sounds like solitary rumination. Simon interacts with the guitar, and this underlies the subtle virtuosity of most of his songs during his lifetime. Sketching patterns with his fingers, he grabs and releases melodic phrases, teasing pop structures but quickly dissolving them. And around him, sounds can rise from the background at any moment. Additional support guitars, eerie microtonal bell sounds, and more. Harry Partch’s Cloud Bowlthe lilting huff of a bass harmonica, and the voice of his wife, Edie Brickell, in the final moments of the album.
