Up Through the Middle and Around Again
RECORDINGS
RECORDINGS; CARLY SIMON'South EMOTION-LADEN SELF-PORTRAIT
Run across the commodity in its original context from
May 3, 1987
,
Department two , Page
23Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive do good for abode delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print annal, before the beginning of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles every bit they originally appeared, The Times does not modify, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to piece of work to meliorate these archived versions.
''COMING AROUND Once more,'' the title song of Carly Simon's latest album, embodies everything that the 41-year-one-time singer-songwriter does best. This deceptively uncomplicated vocal, written for the motion picture ''Heartburn,'' distills the flick'southward themes and atmosphere in broad, edgeless strokes. Depicting a high-powered, loftier-strung woman struggling miserably through the rituals of daily life while her union is coming autonomously, its verses paint a concise picture of domestic agony: ''You pay the grocer/ Set up the toaster/ Kiss the host goodbye/ And so you lot break a window/ Burn the souffle/ Scream the lullaby.''
The vocal's chorus, like its verses, is an emotional seesaw teetering between composure and despair. ''I know nothing stays the same/ But if you're willing to play the game/ It's coming around once more,'' the singer asserts. Then all of a sudden the vocal shifts into a bluesy harmonic manner and the lyric knifes around two lines that sting with ironic cynicism: ''So don't heed if I fall apart/ There'due south more room in a cleaved centre.''
Ms. Simon'due south edgy, open-hearted operation is perfectly in character with the attitude of the song'southward protagonist. Through subtle shifts of vocal intonation, she acts out all the emotional changes in a lyric that combines fragmentary images of maternal caring, metaphysical bewilderment, rage, wild romantic longing, helplessness, boredom and exhilaration into a portrait of embattled upper-centre-course domesticity.
''Coming Effectually Over again'' is the thematic centerpiece of an anthology (Arista AL 4443; cassette, compact disk) that is the latest and one of the strongest chapters in a growing catalogue that seems increasingly like the pop-music equivalent of the diaries of Anais Nin or Erica Jong'southward autobiographical novels. Each Carly Simon album lays bare a psychological mural whose outlines are familiar but whose details and perspective change from record to record. With ''Coming Around Over again,'' Ms. Simon'southward diaristic oeuvre now covers some xvi years. Many love affairs, a marriage, family relationships, friendships and childhood and boyish memories take been reflected on, celebrated and rued in a trunk of work that offers a strikingly aboveboard and instructive self-portrait.
In her songs, Ms. Simon has always presented herself nakedly, warts and all - skilful-looking, affluent, talented, cultivated, charming, generous and loving on the one mitt; jealous, insecure, demanding, restless, competitive and self-pitying on the other. Given the trendiness of the pop marketplace, Ms. Simon is fortunate to take been able to make records for so many years.
Of all the confessional vocalizer-songwriters who emerged out of the 60'due south counterculture to confide their personal feelings in recorded pop song cycles, she has been i of just a scattering to sustain a major characterization recording career of such duration. And of that handful, she has stayed the closest to the personal confessional fashion. Where other vocaliser-songwriters, like Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen, have aspired toward a stone-and-gyre-based poetic art song, Ms. Simon has mostly kept her musical and lyrical wording within the boundaries of commercial pop-rock. Over the years, her musical vocabulary has changed little. Her characteristic melodies are folk tunes inflected with Broadway and French art-song harmonies and kicked into gear with stone rhythms. Ms. Simon's delivery is openthroated folk crooning punched upward with a stiff sense of rock rhythm.
The constantly evolving cocky-portrait that Ms. Simon has delineated is that of a prototypical, high-achieving, urban baby boomer - liberal, ''liberated'' and determined to have it all. Her most famous song, ''You're So Vain,'' a competitive rejoinder to a narcissistic ex-lover, remains i of the most outspokenly defiant female person stone songs, asserting a new residual of power in male-female relationships.
Though the original songs on Ms. Simon'southward new album carry much the same spirit of sexual claiming as ''You're So Vain,'' the years have somewhat mellowed her brashness. More than whatever of its predecessors, the new record deals forthrightly with conflicting needs for romantic passion and stable domesticity. In ''The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of,'' Ms. Simon, contemplating a electric current relationship, reflects to herself, ''Just because y'all don't see shooting stars/ Doesn't hateful it isn't perfect/ Tin't you come across. . ./ Information technology'southward the stuff that dreams are fabricated of/ It's the slow and steady burn down.'' These feelings are seconded by a revival of Joe Tex's 1964 soul standard, ''Concur What You lot've Got,'' and a popular-rock rendition of ''Every bit Fourth dimension Goes Past'' that features Stevie Wonder on harmonica and an organization that pointedly brings in the theme of ''Coming Around Again.'' The theme recurs a third time in ''Itsy Bitsy Spider,'' an adaptation of a nursery rhyme sung past a children's chorus.
Warring confronting the songs that affirm stability are other songs that demand instant gratification and the excitement of a grand passion. ''Don't requite me fountains, I need waterfalls,'' the singer demands in ''Give Me All Dark.'' And one of the many requests in ''All I Desire Is You'' is for ''Mack truck loving.''
Along with the championship tune, the album's nearly haunting cutting is a song of boyish memory titled ''Ii Hot Girls (On a Hot Summer Night)'' in which the vocaliser remembers competing with a friend for the attentions of a boy and losing. Like ''Coming Around Again,'' ''Two Hot Girls'' is quintessential Carly Simon. Blunt, succinct and catchy on the surface, underneath information technology is psychologically complex. And below the confident gregariousness of Ms. Simon'south voice quivers a seam of vulnerability. Ms. Simon'due south special quality is to convey simultaneously the insecure child and the superwoman she is always on the road to becoming.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/03/arts/recordings-carly-simon-s-emotion-laden-self-portrait.html
Post a Comment for "Up Through the Middle and Around Again"