Over the past few weeks, our most active record reviewers have had the task of choosing their 5 favorite recordings of 2023, and here they are. This selection is unique and quite different of all you can find on the web or through traditional medias.
Paul Simon is one of the most influential American songwriters of his generation. Following the great success of Simon & Garfunkel, his solo career has explored a wide range of musical universes, notably South African, while at the same time carving out an intimate, brilliant and very special poetic universe. Seven Psalms is his fifteenth and latest opus. Paul Simon himself said so. Like the vast majority of his previous albums, it is a remarkable terminus. Paul Simon is stripped bare here: his voice, his acoustic guitars, accompanied by a few discreet but inventive bells and keyboards. You can hear a little flute, vibraphone and strings. His wife, singer Edie Brickell, appears twice, along with a British Voces8 choir. This album is a meditation on life and death, which is just around the corner. At eighty-two, Paul Simon speaks of the “great migration”, forgiveness, love and the “trail of volcanoes”. “No one can die of too much love”, says this man who has lived through many dark periods despite his great popular success.
