Simon and Garfunkel
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

THE REVIEW

Overwhelmed by the sudden and unexpected success of "The Sounds of Silence," Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel hastily reunited in 1965 to record an album that bore the same title as that song, achieving the same triumph of criticism and audience. Thanks to Simon's songwriting, quickly established as one of the most talented composers of the moment, Garfunkel's icy voice, and the electric touch - very Byrds of Mr. Tambourine Man, very Dylan of Highway 61, but after all, the year running is that 1965 - skillfully given by producer Bob Johnston, the duo had become a major star in the newly-born American folk rock firmament.

Moreover, the same folk rock label was a bit tight for the two, especially for Simon, who if he was a folksinger, it was of a decidedly peculiar and poetic variant. So at the beginning of 1966, when they had to start working on a new album, they found themselves at a crossroads, whether to continue on the path of the previous album, with the electrified folk pieces, or to change, at least in part, musical and other choices...

Thus Paul’s poetry consecrates a man, in whom he undoubtedly recognizes himself, as the central figure of his lyrics; a young man, raised in the city, still without a direction, a precise sense of life, constantly searching for points of reference. A young man who self-analyzes, discovering the inner fragmentation as a human condition, who shuns those who always have a truth in their pocket, from the intellectualoids who discuss nothingness, from the false myth of progress, and media massification. He not only shuns them, but he also mocks them, scratches them with sarcasm and irony, the only weapons he possesses. But behind these weapons, hides an insecure, uncertain, dreaming person, the only woman he can love is ideal and idealized, like a medieval troubadour’s, he doesn't know her but he knows that sooner or later he will discover her. He seeks simple but true, sincere pleasures, the affection and warmth of a domestic hearth rather than the miserable and precarious one of celebrity. To smile at an often gray present, he takes refuge in friendship, that pure and authentic one, that of childhood (which is in fact the one with Garfunkel), clinging to the happy memories of an already distant age. A man who like the contemporary one, struggles to be understood by those around him, and if to interact with others he writes on the subway walls, what is wrong, Simon wonders. He will be an alienated, others will say, but maybe, Paul wants to tell us, the whole society is alienated.

 But "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" is not just poetry, it is also music.

In "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" and "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" we rediscover the ancient English folk tradition, learned by Simon the previous year during a stay in England where he had the chance to meet and play with distinguished musicians like Davy Graham (and during which many of the songs of this album and "Sounds of Silence" were written). But it also looks at home, at the New York backyard, as demonstrated by those delightful Broadway-style vignettes of "Cloudy" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song". Or it explores almost Morricone-like western sounds, as in "Patterns". But there are also more electric pieces, which however are perhaps the least inspired and most forced, with the exception of the tender "Homeward Bound", one of the gems of the album.

If "Sounds of Silence" was the album of worldwide success, "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" was that of consecration, granting Simon and Garfunkel that aura of artistic respectability that allowed them, at a time when one had to produce two albums a year, to release one every two. They were the soundtrack of a generation, in life and in cinema. For us, they are gems of a past era, telling thoughts, feelings, stories of two New York friends from the Sixties, ultimately not too different from ours.