I was talking a friend the other night and I think I may have found the only other person in the world who likes this album. After the impact made by Graceland, Paul Simon’s career seemed to come to an abrupt halt in rather spectacular fashion when it ran into the brick wall of Rhythm of the Saints. Maybe he slightly over-egged the pudding, maybe he wasn’t disciplined enough after the success of Graceland, maybe he had too many pre-conceived notions of what he wanted to achieve… ach whatever the reason, the album just didn’t click with the public, and that was it from Paul Simon for years.
Rhythm of the Saints didn’t really click with me either, I have to confess, so by the time Songs From the Capeman was released in 1997 I will admit approaching it with some trepidation. It barely made a scratch on the public consciousness, but I actually think this is a great album.
Simon works a lot in an area which is politically sensitive, in that he is often more obviously open to the accusations of cultural colonialism which dog Vampire Weekend. For all the Lion King charicatures of their last album irritated the shit out of me, I think Vampire Weekend tend to draw their influences not from the cultures from which they are accused of pilfering, but from sources once and twice removed, which makes that accusation a little harder to seriously level at the band. Paul Simon, on the other hand, seems to go a lot closer to the source, which if anything is also closer to what could conceivably be described as actual exploitation.
Am I accusing Paul Simon of being exploitative, then? Well, no I’m not. I am not Puerto Rican, and know so little about the place that it’s really not my accusation to make anyway. And besides Simon does, at least from my superficial perspective, seem to genuinely immerse himself in the culture he is working with, and try and approach his work from the perspective of genuine understanding. I could be totally wrong about that, of course.
This album, for example, far from being a tourists’ eye view of some ethnic culture or other, was actually written for a Broadway musical* specifically about the life of Salvador Agron, who was sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers in a gang fight in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, in 1959. So as well as being a strong and deliberate political statement about racial divides and class culture in the States (as well as many other things), it does seem to me to be a genuinely sensitive attempt to understand, rather than simply mimick. As I said, though, that’s really not my place to say. You can read a little more about it, starting with those Wikipedia links, and then judge for yourself if you are so inclined.
So political bollocks aside, is it any good? Well of course, I think so or I wouldn’t be writing this. There are, admittedly a couple of songs which I find saccharine to the point of physical pain – I Was Born in Puerto Rico springs to mind, and I really squirm at Time is an Ocean – but there’s a shitload of great stuff on here.
The two songs downloadable below, Bernadette, Satin Summer Nights, Trailways Bus, Quality, Killer Wants to Go to College – all of them have a laid back, uninsistent sort of vibe and a nice rhythm. A lot also include the kind of male-female duets which made Calexico’s Roka so incredible. I suppose I’d say that there’s just a lot of warmth about this album. It’s written with sympathy, but doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the situation it describes. There’s no obvious hit, and it’s all perhaps a bit sweary and generally a bit downbeat for radio, so maybe that contributed to it never really capturing the public imagination, but in general I think this is a really underrated record.
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Paul Simon – Vampires
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*Yeah, because Broadway’s never exploitative, superficial or sensationalist, right? Oh.
Whee, back on the radio. And for some reason tonight’s playlist is going to consist of lots of pretty well-established artists. There is no reason for this at all, it just worked out that way when I was selecting the playlist.
