a pencil pointa love bite
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 April 2020 10:13 (four years ago) link
You know what has had me thinking about this record? Mario Brothers.
There is a part of the guitar line in "Spirit Voices" that always sounded eerily like 80s video game music to me, but I could never quite pinpoint what it was.
Then my son started playing this annoyingly repetitive Mario game and I heard it instantly. Doot-doo-doo-doo-doot-DOOT-da-dee-doo-doo. By moon, we walk, to the brujo's door. 1 UP!
When I get my shit together I will have to isolate this in a DAW so I can show y'all what I mean but seriously.
you can hear the bit I mean from 0:18 to 0:21 here, but it repeats throughout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYQ_X3E12U
Compare with around 0:10 here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2sTvN4Tob8
― stone cold jane austen (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 24 April 2020 14:36 (four years ago) link
What a lovely album this is.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 2 August 2020 23:03 (three years ago) link
yup
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2020 02:46 (three years ago) link
Confirmed
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 3 August 2020 02:55 (three years ago) link
it's true
― call all destroyer, Monday, 3 August 2020 03:05 (three years ago) link
This is a lonely lifeSorrows everywhere you turn And that is worth some money if you think about itThat is worth some money
― JoeStork, Monday, 3 August 2020 03:16 (three years ago) link
surely one of his prettiest recordings? hard for me to imagine the album without that song, always feels like the centerpiece to me.
― Doctor Casino, Monday, 3 August 2020 03:34 (three years ago) link
I dig it
― birdistheword, Monday, 3 August 2020 03:38 (three years ago) link
Fans of this album; which has been your favourite since this?
― piscesx, Monday, 3 August 2020 04:24 (three years ago) link
So Beautiful or So What
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2020 09:40 (three years ago) link
I think Stranger to Stranger, Surprise, and So Beautiful or So What are all very respectable late career efforts.
― aphoristical, Monday, 3 August 2020 10:09 (three years ago) link
'So Beautiful or So What' is my most favourite post-Rhythm record as well, but I love all of them - I'm even a big fan of 'Songs From The Capeman'. 'You're the One' seems rather underappreciated and was a primary target for re-recordings for 'In The Blue Light', but I'd say that many songs on that album are brilliant too.
'Rhythm of the Saints' is utterly perfect.
― Valentijn, Monday, 3 August 2020 12:04 (three years ago) link
Valentijn otm
― pizzagnostic (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 August 2020 14:34 (three years ago) link
Love the first half of this album - track after track of total stunners. And then it mostly falls off a cliff on side 2, imo.
― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Monday, 3 August 2020 17:58 (three years ago) link
is 'The Cool Cool River' in the non-mostly section?
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2020 18:14 (three years ago) link
There is an evergreen debate in my head as to whether I prefer the way The Cool Cool River fades out on the album, or the bombastic horn section ending on Concert in the Park. Both so amazing.
Have always low-key loved
Maybe not in my lifetime, but in yours / I feel sure
A beautiful piece of misdirection. Following a line like "We shall suffer no more" it feels like it's gonna go into the formulation "maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not in yours, but someday" or something to that effect. But no, it's coming. In yours. He feels sure. The audacity!
God I'm looking at the Cool Cool River lyrics in full right now and it's just a masterpiece. I have deep personal connections to both Can't Run But and the Coast but it would be hard not to vote for Cool Cool River.
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, 3 August 2020 19:43 (three years ago) link
it's just a little lump but you feel itin the creases and the shadowswith a rattling deep emotion
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, 3 August 2020 19:44 (three years ago) link
As I have said before, check out the muthaflippin DRAFTS. The work-in-progress tracks on the bonus disc reveal that even the lyrics he threw AWAY were top-notch.
"The Coast" work-in-progress
This is the echo of the echo of the first song that lullabied /The heartbeat of the host
"Spirit Voices" work-in-progress:
My horse and my saddle and my gracious companions /We tripped over a mountain and we fell into a vast canyon
I mean, really. Maybe the songs as eventually released were fine, but those throwaway lyrics are as good as most people will ever write.
― we slept on the banks on the leaves of a banyan tree (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 August 2020 19:46 (three years ago) link
beautiful
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, 3 August 2020 19:47 (three years ago) link
played this last night... it is august after all. "further to fly" really hitting last night
it's interesting on apple music now this album is listed first under the essentials section before graceland
― J0rdan S., Monday, 3 August 2020 19:50 (three years ago) link
― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Monday, August 3, 2020 1:58 PM (one hour ago)
idk how you could come up w/ a better half of an album than this record thru "she moves on," but i like "spirit voices" and the title track a lot. they're a bit looser and end the album ona. bit of a more whimsical note compared to some of the more studied emotional excavations
― J0rdan S., Monday, 3 August 2020 19:52 (three years ago) link
So Beautiful or So What would be my favorite since too, and Stranger to Stranger is also excellent. Surprise doesn't quite work all the way through, but there's at least a strong EP's worth of excellent music there. Beyond that, there's only a few other good songs worth revisiting ("Darling Lorraine" for one), but he's put out only five albums of all-new songs since The Rhythm of the Saints, so he's done all right.
― birdistheword, Monday, 3 August 2020 20:28 (three years ago) link
So Beautiful ... is the only of his post Rhythm of the Saints albums I connected with. I got to see him play a small club behind it, was awesome.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 3 August 2020 21:43 (three years ago) link
Was this a New Jersey?
― piscesx, Monday, 3 August 2020 21:45 (three years ago) link
Not at all. I don't remember a sense of disappointment.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2020 21:54 (three years ago) link
He was at risk of one post-Graceland but RotS totally delivered without rehashing it.
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, 3 August 2020 22:24 (three years ago) link
also pretty strong sonic connection between graceland and this... it's an expansion of that world from within as opposed to some deconstruction or pivot from it
― J0rdan S., Monday, 3 August 2020 22:24 (three years ago) link
There were, however, lazy white takes I remember glancing at (I was just becoming aware of rockcrit): "Brazilian percussion"= "South African rhythms."
Also, the album had no "You Can Call Me Al" as a hit even though (a) "The Obvious Child" and "Proof" got heavy MTV play (b) "You Can Call Me Al" only reached #23 in its second release.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2020 22:48 (three years ago) link
this definitely doesn't have as many singles or single-esque tracks than Graceland, and overall the palette is way less interested in punching through the speakers and grabbing you, and a lot of the songs really stay in their groove and ride it into those emotional excavations. it's great. but can't imagine, for example, falling in love with almost every track as a child, the way i did with Graceland. it's just a different kind of record, for a different moment in a life. almost like /still crazy/ versus the first two solo albums, maybe. tho Graceland has plenty of that Simon wistfulness. just it also has like "Gumboots" and "I Know What I Know" and "That Was Your Mother" and the opening of "Diamonds." basically Graceland is a much more *fun* album - maybe his most fun album? but if you're in the mood, ROTS lets you ease into the sadness and the beauty, the middle-agedness, the reflection.
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 4 August 2020 03:16 (three years ago) link
i think that's right. i had access to both albums as a child but i never really dug deep on RotS until my late 20s. graceland bounds from track to track with all these immediate new sounds in a way that few records ever have. i had to be much older to realize that melodically and lyrically RotS was just as good or better.
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 4 August 2020 03:24 (three years ago) link
"spirit voices" is a great song... there's something about the way he sings the titular line that kinda drags along in this lazy way. love it
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 11 August 2020 00:04 (three years ago) link
For years after I loved this album, I sort of hated it...it became associated with too many things I dislike.
But I returned to it a few weeks ago, and it truly is so so good.
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Tuesday, 11 August 2020 01:04 (three years ago) link
confession, i've never been able to fully get on board with "Spirit Voices." maybe feels the most like what the bad version of this album would be --- white guy is cultural tourist, convinced he's had profound experience. but really it might just be the line "i drink a cup of herbal brew." it's a really lovely recording though.
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 11 August 2020 02:38 (three years ago) link
you aren't wrong but the last part wins out for me
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 11 August 2020 02:49 (three years ago) link
This thread inspired me to pull out my cassette of RotS as I'm trying to fall asleep--just a couple of tracks in, and I'm reminded that J.J. freaking Cale is on "Can't Run But"; his telltale gentle tonedoggery could only be coaxed from the fingers of one singular Okie guitar slinger (as much as Clapton would hope otherwise)
― call mr zbow that's my name that name again is mr zbow (Craig D.), Tuesday, 11 August 2020 05:28 (three years ago) link
That reminds me that Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds plays harmonica on "The Obvious Child", which is slightly less surprising once you remember that at the time he was go-to guy for the authentic harp thang.
― "...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 11 August 2020 05:56 (three years ago) link
there is a crazy storm here atm & i am a bit terrified of storms so i put on Rhythm Of The Saints & it’s like the musical equivalent of a weighted blanket but like, magical & restorative i have loved Paul Simon my whole entire life but holy shit, since I hit middle age he just hits so ~beautifully~ i feel v corny but it is so profound for me these past few years in particular
― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 5 January 2023 03:32 (one year ago) link
j0rd’s original origin story for this thread is pure gold btw
Love u
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 January 2023 05:20 (one year ago) link
back atcha <3
― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 5 January 2023 05:30 (one year ago) link
i would change my vote to “she moves on” now. such a tender and vivid song there were a few weeks this past summer where i basically only listened to the 91 concert in the park album… great new york summer album, when he says it’s a beautiful night in new york you can really feel it. he plays a good number of rhythm of the saints songs including ones like “she moves on” that seem to have been dropped from his sets by the 2000s.
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 5 January 2023 07:00 (one year ago) link
My storybook loverYou have underestimated my powerAs you surely will discover
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 January 2023 10:30 (one year ago) link
appreciate this revive, Veg. giving this a listen this morning. my boo got us an upgrade for the turntable cartridge for Christmas and it is sounding so gently enveloping and fabulous on headphones. love the little bits of synth sprinkled throughout. and man, Vincent Nguini deserves a lot more attention... his guitar work is so lovely and so essential to the sound of the album.
― got it in the blood, the kid's a pelican (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 5 January 2023 14:50 (one year ago) link
Love that '91 concert album.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Thursday, 5 January 2023 14:51 (one year ago) link
guys now that i have a kid i sing so much paul simes to her
can't listen to "born at the right time" without sobbing tbh
i also feel v corny, but there it is
not rhythm of the saints-specific but she just stopped letting me sing her "graceland" to sleep after basically a year of doing so.
i think rhythm has become my favorite of his albums
― horseshoe, Thursday, 5 January 2023 14:52 (one year ago) link
argh sorry for the double post
great post tho!
― got it in the blood, the kid's a pelican (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 5 January 2023 15:06 (one year ago) link
so nice it needed posting twice :)
― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 5 January 2023 15:27 (one year ago) link