Some Enchanted Evening

The angelic half of Simon & Garfunkel may seem predictable in following Rod Stewart and other Baby Boomers on a romp through the Great American Songbook, but Art would have us think his foray is more inspired, more poetic than that, as he sprinkles the inside of his CD jacket with a series of confessional statements. In the first, he informs us he made the album under the "sway" of Chet Baker and Johnny Mathis, and in the second gives even pretentious novelist Jeanette Winterson a run for her money: "It wasn't Monet, it was France; It's not what we say, but the dance we're in." All right, then, but Some Enchanted Evening should also come with a warning sticker: Do not play while operating heavy machinery. In a cotton-soft voice, Garfunkel moves through works by Johnny Mercer, George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, and Rodgers and Hammerstein as if he's the spokesperson for Prozac Nation. One may applaud his Everyman's approach to material "owned" by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Rosemary Clooney, but he has tried to build a bridge over... well, not troubled, but complex and emotionally swirling waters, and in this framework, he simply hasn't the phrasing or the interpretative moxie to pull it off. When he sings "I'm so in love" on "Easy Living," he's so passionless he might as well be wooing a canary; likewise, his take on "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" sounds positively lobotomized. Producer Richard Perry (Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, Garfunkel's own 1975 Breakaway) tries to compensate by updating the approach--employing synth strings, for example, instead of an orchestra--and tweaking the arrangements with contemporary fusion. But even that is wrong-headed: A pedal steel guitar should not be in the same universe with a clarinet. What were they thinking? --Alanna Nash

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