This reflective, troubled quality is not the product of Paul Simon's writing alone. The plaintive colouring of Art Garfunkel's vocal lends Simon's lyrics a celestial air that switches on our emotional receptors. Though his contribution is often underestimated, Arty knows how to yang Paul's yin.
Bookends, Simon and Garfunkel's fourth album and the one that followed the duo's profile-boosting contribution to The Graduate soundtrack, was released in 1968 to immediate success. It topped the Billboard album chart, sustained by four singles - A Hazy Shade Of Winter, At The Zoo, Fakin' It and No 1 hit Mrs Robinson.
Each of the singles was lifted from side two of Bookends. Side one is given over to a conceptual song cycle that explores the birth and death of romantic ideals and the reigning in of expectations as the truth of our mortality dawns on us. It's a brave, disturbing and compelling set of vignettes, strongly infused with the flavour of questioning and confrontation that marked the ethical battles of the flower-power era.
Emboldened by the innovative techniques used on Sgt Pepper, Simon and Garfunkel take the production reins for the first time, immediately dispelling any remaining notions of their music as limp folk-pop.
As the delicate Bookends Theme makes way for the strident moog intro and wailing background sound effects in Save The Life Of My Child, it becomes clear this is no trip to Scarborough Fair. America is placid by contrast but a masterpiece of storytelling, economical lyrically but vast in its symbolic scope.
When Old Friends asks, "Can you imagine us years from today?" we're left to ponder what lies in store for us, and how terribly strange it is to age.
