Album: Garfunkel & Garfunkel: Father and Son

A father and son union – the first joint collaboration by Garfunkel père et fils. Art Junior it seems has already released two solo albums, Wie Du and Evergreen, Simon & Garfunkel covers, both of which charted in Germany, from where the Garfunkel antecedents hail.

Father and Son celebrates “a unique connection” (obviously) and is “an expression of our bond”. Certainly, their voices have a good deal in common though Junior’s is less pure than Senior’s in its best-selling Simon & Garfunkel heyday. Though Art Senior suffered vocal cord paresis in 2010, the result of choking on a chunk of lobster, his voice has aged well, helped no doubt by his giving up smoking. “I like to say my son is a better singer than I am. I mean, I’m pretty good… but he is better,” says the old man, who sired Art Junior in 1990, the first of two children with his third wife Kathryn Cermak. Occasionally it’s hard to tell them apart, though on some cuts it sounds as though Art Senior’s teeth don’t quite fit into his mouth.

Rock’s dynastic aspirations are often rather tiresome, the paths into the music business of so many only modestly talented progenies smoothed by ambitious parents. Actually making an album together is obviously intended as a career boost, the old man’s fans with any luck buying the kid’s release and thus also boosting the coffers. The real problem with Father and Son – an album with “a real modern orchestral vibe, with lots of strings” – is that is that it is hideously over-arranged, a collection of mostly decent songs drowning under churning strings. “Blue Moon”, the album’s opener on which melodic and harmonic tweaks do not enhance the Rodgers and Hart original, offers a taste of what’s to come and, after repeated listening, I think it may be the album’s nadir, though “Vincent” is another horror. Dear lord, what is going on behind the vocals? And heaven knows what Paul Simon, with whom Art recently had a tearful reunion, thinks of “Old Friends” from the duo’s 1968 album Bookends.

Art Junior has explained that “We recorded about a dozen of our most cherished songs. I brought more of the Eighties influences into the project, and my father brought more of the Great American Songbook – wonderful songs from the 1940s and so on. These two influences came together in a pretty exciting way”.  

“Time After Time”, the Cyndi Lauper number that was released as a single a couple of months back, is one of the better offerings, but the song that works best is “Here Comes the Rain Again”, the Eurythmics classic, in large part because it draws heavily on the original sound world. “Father and Son”, from Cat Stevens’ 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman, also suffers from  musical bloat, though it does have its moments, Father Art’s resonant lower register a good and striking counterpoint to Son Art’s lighter timbre.

An album that's definitely only one for Simon & Garfunkel completists anxious to own everything and anything on which the duo, together or separately, sneezed.

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