Making his technical debut as a songwriter (technical in that his prose poems serve as a lyric source on several tracks), Art Garfunkel takes top billing in what actually qualifies as a collaboration with two other singer/songwriters, Nashville's Buddy Mondlock and L.A.-based Maia Sharp; producer/songwriter Billy Mann plays an essential creative role as well.
For all the diverse input, this remains a Garfunkel project at heart. His airy, delicate singing, remarkably identical in quality to his earliest recordings some 40 years earlier, provides the essential textural reference; Mondlock's vocals uncannily replicate Garfunkel's from the opening moments of "Bounce" and elsewhere throughout the album. Only two of these songs were written by outsiders, and these -- the self-consciously buoyant "Young and Free" and uncomfortably precious "What I Love About Rain" -- don't match the rest in either musical or lyrical accomplishment.
Two in particular create near-magical spells, and both are draw from Garfunkel's writing: "The Thread," a wistful chronicle of love lost amidst references to romantic landmarks in New York, and "Perfect Moment," an account of strangers exchanging glances in a theater lobby and achieving, in that timeless second, all the perfection and connection two people might expect.
This performance, musically reminiscent of the Simon & Garfunkel classic "For Emily," is exquisitely crafted and impeccably performed -- a high point not only here, but in all of Garfunkel's catalog.
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