Simon and Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence (1966)

After Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., Simon and Garfunkel's acoustic debut album, sparked little interest upon its release in 1964, Paul Simon went to England, where he recorded a solo album (The Paul Simon Songbook, released in the U.K. only), while Art Garfunkel resumed his studies at Columbia University.  Then in 1965, by a fluke, "The Sound of Silence," as it was originally titled on the Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. album (it was pluralized later) began to get airplay on radio stations in Florida per listeners' requests.  The duo's producer, Tom Wilson - who produced Bob Dylan's recording of "Like a Rolling Stone" - capitalized on the growing folk-rock boom by overdubbing Dylan's own electric studio band on the track and having it released as a single.  Simon was initially displeased, but when he heard the new version of his song, he liked it; when the electric version became a hit, he and Garfunkel quickly regrouped in New York and recorded a second album to follow up their success.

Alas, the record that resulted was not a masterpiece.  Sounds of Silence, released in January 1966,  is a mishmash of newly composed but mostly uninspired Simon tunes and a few recycled numbers from The Paul Simon Songbook; the music varies from gentle acoustic folk to some rather strident rock arrangements, ultimately being too diffuse to make the overall sound cohere. (To be fair, there were a few Paul Simon Songbook tunes on the duo's superb third album, Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme, but they were better written and arranged than anything here.)

The title track is a tremendous song, no question about it, but other songs on this record are less than grand.  "Leaves That Are Green" has a pretty English folk arrangement negated by tedious, obvious metaphoric lyrics about the passage of time.  "Somewhere They Can't Find Me," a tale of a young man preparing to go on the run after robbing a liquor store, is a complete rewrite of the title track of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., made quite petulant by Simon and Garfunkel's vocal deliveries and the grating rock music backing them.  When Simon isn't rewriting his own work, he's offering up a song ripping off poet Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Richard Cory," about a wealthy man who commits suicide because he has no real friends. Robinson's verse shows some sympathy for the man; Simon's narrator in the song of the same title is too busy sneering at Richard Cory and his wealth while bitching about being a lowly worker in Mr. Cory's factory.

For the most part, Sounds of Silence finds Simon still trying to get beyond being a Dylan clone and trying to find his own voice as a songwriter.  A lot of his songs here are either inescapably self-absorbed or laden with pretentious poeticism . . . or both.  At this point in Simon's career, his songwriting was strictly a hit-or-miss affair. His attempts to write straight pop were a work in progress; despite composing the excellent finger-popping tune "Red Rubber Ball" with Bruce Woodley of the folk group the Seekers (the song was famously recorded by the Cyrkle), all he could do on this record was "We Got a Groovey Thing Goin'," which attempted to be Beatlesque but sounds more like an unintentional parody of Beatles imitators.  Garfunkel's solo vocal showcase on Sounds of Silence, "April Come She Will," is a pleasant but slight number based on a child's nursery rhyme that's nowhere nearly as inventive as the similarly re-imagined child's rhymes that the Beatles would produce in their psychedelic phase.  

Still, aside from "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" and "Richard Cory," Simon and Garfunkel's harmonies here are first rate, and throughout the record they sound pleased to be working together again after their brief separation.  There are moments here that show hints of Simon's greatness to come - "Kathy's Song," sung by Simon solo, is one of the best acoustic ballads he's ever written, in fact - but the most predominant new song here is "I Am a Rock," a well-crafted song striking a note of independence but still feeling a bit unappetizing in its disavowal of friendships and its embrace of voluntary isolation.  Even Simon calls "I Am a Rock" his most unquestionably neurotic song.  Simon became much less neurotic afterwards, but the song still solidified Simon's place as the Woody Allen of rock.