The second disc begins with four songs from The Rhythm of the Saints, highlighted by the much praised "Spirit Voices" with its Portuguese interpolation by Milton Nascimento. There are a couple of songs from Simon's ill-fated Broadway venture The Capeman. If the music represented here--the dramatic "Born in Puerto Rico" and the doo wop throwback, "Quality"--is any indication, one has to wonder why the show didn't do better. The album ends with selections from his 2011 release So Beautiful or So What including the title song. If the music on this disc is not as well known, it is nonetheless indicative of the composer's range and the continued variety of his interests.
Tom Moon's liner notes provide a lucid critical evaluation of Simon's work. He talks about the composer's lyric brilliance, emphasizing his sense of humor. He stresses the composer's eclectic musical passions. "Simon's songbook," he suggests, "can be appreciated as the journey of a restless songwriter searching for new ways to communicate, driven toward new musical settings for his ideas." Simon has never been one to keep repeating his successes. No doubt he could have kept turning out the kind of music that made the duet's name a household word back in the sixties, but that is not the way of the true artist. The true artist is always looking to exceed his grasp. Paul Simon is that true artist.
Songwriter, with its classic songs and its new works that may yet become classic, is simply one more demonstration of that fact. Certainly there will be those that object to this or that inclusion at the expense of this or that omission; but the more one listens to the newer pieces, the more familiar they become, andthe more likely those objections will disappear.
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