Paul Simon
Still Crazy After All These Years

THE REVIEW

Paul Simon's third solo studio album, and the fourth if we also include Live Rhymin’ from 1974, opens with the soft and sleepy notes of an electric piano.

“I met my old lover on the street last night; she seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled…”, he sings in the title track, (“I met my old love on the street last night; she seemed so happy to see me, and I smiled at her…”).

It's an album of reflection and introspection, a bittersweet journey into the private story of a marital separation, but it's also an album of stylistic change, and it won't be the only one in a highly esteemed career.

The solo debut in 1972 seemed to want to wipe out the artistic peaks of Bridge Over Troubled Water (an unsurpassable apotheosis of pop, impeccably made from every point of view), and start from scratch, with bare arrangements reduced almost to the bone.

There Goes Rhymin’ Simon pleasantly nodded to various influences, giving yet another proof of Simon's almost obsessive care for his work: an artist who enlists the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section for a track tinged with gospel and soul like One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor, but thinks well of traveling to Europe for the orchestration of American Tune, inspired by the musical theme of The Passion According to St. Matthew by J.S. Bach.

Still Crazy is a new surprise: here the atmosphere is sober and homogeneous, it is an album rich with jazz nuances, with rather unusual harmonies, as in the delicate I Do It For Your Love, or in the winking and oblique groove of Have A Good Time. Moreover, there are powerful melodic openings, as in Some Folks Lives Roll Easy, or in the poignant My Little Town, which sees him for the first time returning to share the recording studio with Art Garfunkel.

But what perhaps is most enjoyable about this somewhat melancholic version of Simon, is the subtle, irresistible sense of humor that permeates the lyrics: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover remains in the memory of many, not only for a famous drum pattern by Steve Gadd, but also for the strength of its witty proposition, and the same can be said for the title track. As Philip Glass observed, Paul Simon's verses and titles have the ability to assert themselves in the collective imagination with the force and significance of certain idiomatic expressions.
Another gem of this album is Gone At Last, in which the more "black" streak of some of the songwriter's writing finds perfect embodiment in the vocal performance of Phoebe Snow.

In short, an album that at first listen seems to simply flow pleasantly, but that reveals many merits upon a more in-depth listen and can be appreciated for a long time.

Reissued in a remastered edition in 2004 with two bonus tracks.