A very nice album with some very great songs, I like this a lot, although it seems to be a bit all over the place structurally. It is as if they’ve heard Sgt, Peppers’… and tried to jazz this album up a bit with cigarettes being lit (‘Overs’), a couple of minutes of dialogue (‘Old People’) running into a related track (‘Old friends’) and some quirky tracks too (‘At the zoo’).
The album starts off on the wrong foot in my view with the opening notes of ‘Save the life of my child’ jarring against the peaceful acoustic guitar of the ‘Bookends theme’ opening. This track runs into ‘America’, the highlight of the album with one of the great lyrics of all time “toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat”.
‘America’ is certainly the highlight along with ‘Overs’, a comment on losing love with a beautiful lyric that certainly does not rhyme, nor does it need to.

Here is the opening of ‘Overs’, a really beautiful, heartfelt, poetic, but sad, lyric.

Why don’t we stop fooling ourselves?
The game is over,
Over,
Over.
No good times, no bad times,
There’s no times at all,
Just The New York Times,
Sitting on the windowsill
Near the flowers.
We might as well be apart.

Songwriter: Paul Simon
Overs lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

‘Overs’ falls into some dialogue with old people, called ‘Voices of Old People’ that then wanders into ‘Old Friend’ that merges, beautifully into the ‘Bookends theme (reprise)’.  A really beautiful sequence of rolling connected and related tracks that I have listened to several times.
Thereafter, we are left with some tracks I read were left over from the film The Graduate and also from previous album ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’. The tracks, whilst jaunty, and catchy, don’t really do justice to the A Side, as I guess this would have been.

My KEF speakers always sound good with vocal albums and it is here, with my NAP 250 barely breaking sweat.

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Album – Bookends
Artist – Simon and Garfunkel
Favourite Track – Overs, America
Released – 1968
Rating – 8.5
Time – 29’29”
Tracks – 12

Source – Tidal
Player/Streamers – Naim NAC-N 272
Amplifier/DAC – NAP250
Output – KEF R700
Next Album – 129 – SF Sorrow by The Pretty Things