Simon Mayo Blame

Though he recorded the album's prominent percussion tracks in Brazil, Paul Simon fashioned The Rhythm of the Saints as a deliberate follow-up to the artistic breakthrough and commercial comeback that was the South Africa-tinged Graceland. Several of the musicians who had appeared previously were back, along with some of the New York session players who had worked with Simon in the 1970s, and the overall sound was familiar to fans of Graceland. Further, Simon's nonlinear lyrical approach was carried over: he continued to ruminate about love, aging, and the onslaught of modern life in disconnected phrases and images that created impressions rather than telling straightforward stories. But where Graceland had seamlessly merged its styles into an exuberant whole, The Rhythm of the Saints was less well digested…

The title makes plain the intention of Paul Simon on this 2011 double-disc set: the focus is not on the hits but the songs, to the extent that his most famous song is not performed either by him solo or with Art Garfunkel, it is sung by Aretha Franklin, a selection that suggests this compilation will be more idiosyncratic than it is. Many of the songs that are Simon’s solo staples - “Mother and Child Reunion,” “Kodachrome,” “American Tune,” “Late in the Evening,” “Still Crazy After All These Years,” “Graceland,” “The Boy in the Bubble” - are here, enough to almost camouflage the big songs that are missing in action, including “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” “Duncan,” “Slip Slidin’ Away,” and “You Can Call Me Al.” All these are casualties of a concept that allows for Simon to spend the entirety of the second disc on albums released since 1990…

One thing Simon & Garfunkel never did much of was tour, so a Paul Simon solo tour, following two commercially successful solo albums, was one more way for Simon to distance himself from the duo and, simultaneously, by performing songs like "The Boxer" and "Homeward Bound," to reclaim his songwriting catalog. Reflecting the musical explorations he had pursued since S & G, Simon brought along Brazilian group Urubamba and gospel group the Jessy Dixon Singers. The result wasn't perfect: nobody needed to hear "Jesus Is the Answer" (a Dixons spotlight number) on a Paul Simon album, and if it was inevitable that he would try his own version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," it was also predestined that he wouldn't come near to matching Garfunkel's original…

Melodious and charming, The Cunning Little Vixen is a work rooted in Czech history and folk music; a sentimental journey through the cycles of life. For Sir Simon Rattle, it's a deeply personal and emotional work. "It's the piece that made me want to become an opera conductor… and still one of the pieces that reduces me to tears more easily than any other," says the LSO's Music Director. Recorded with an outstanding cast during semi-staged performances, this recording is the second in an LSO Live series showcasing acclaimed collaborations between Rattle and the celebrated stage director Peter Sellars. Towering fanfares open Janácek's Sinfonietta, an ode to the composer's hometown of Brno in the now Czech Republic. It's a portrait composed for a national celebration of Slavic culture, with Janácek's love of musical tradition evident in dancing strings and celebratory brass.

The most comprehensive Simon & Garfunkel library anthology ever assembled, The Complete Albums Collection includes the duo's five studio masterpieces (first released between 1964 and 1970), newly remastered from first generation analog sources, and first-time remasters of The Graduate (the groundbreaking motion picture soundtrack album released in 1968) and the long out-of-print The Concert in Central Park (recorded in 1981).

Simon & Garfunkel's second album, Sounds of Silence, was recorded 18 months after their debut long-player, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM – but even though the two albums shared one song (actually, one-and-a-half songs) in common, the sound here seemed a million miles away from the gentle harmonizing and unassuming acoustic accompaniment on the first record…

The most successful folk-rock duo of the 1960s, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel crafted a series of memorable hit albums and singles featuring their choirboy harmonies, ringing acoustic and electric guitars, and Simon's acute, finely wrought songwriting.