In 2018, Paul Simon retired from performing. So Seven Psalms, a 33-minute work of seven interlinked movements, arrives both as a surprise and a revelation. Coming to Simon in a series of dreams, Seven Psalms finds this revered singer-songwriter approaching the big questions in a manner that recalls the seeking of the late Leonard Cohen, another great pop metaphysician raised originally in the Jewish faith. “This whole piece is really an argument I’m having with myself about belief, or not,” Simon notes in the album’s YouTube trailer.
Starring his voice and nimble guitar, with subtly dramatic instrumentation adding texture throughout, this is less a record than a dream state designed to wash over the listener in one sitting. Neither folk nor pop – just two of the genres Simon is best known for – the playing throughout is impressionistic, straying towards a playful country blues on My Professional Opinion, while arpeggiating Spanish guitar lends grace to Your Forgiveness, an etiolated movement where Simon wonders: “Two billion heartbeats and out? Or does it all begin again?”
Throughout are little nods to his autobiography: the Lord, he thinks, might be “a road I slip and slide on”, as per Simon’s 1977 hit Slip Slidin’ Away. At the end is Wait, a beautiful gut punch in which Simon ponders his own mortality.
