ALBUM REVIEW: Simon & Garfunkel - The Graduate

    1968 was business as usual for Simon & Garfunkel, riding off the success of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and some popular performances, including a spot at the now historic Monterey Pop Festival. With this newfound respect and appraisal, new recordings would follow, but no new Simon & Garfunkel graced 1967, much to Columbia's dismay - Paul Simon was hitting a dry-spell in his writing, which combined with plenty of touring to make for a laborious wait until their next album. Nevertheless, a stroke of luck hit Simon & Garfunkel when they were asked to have their music in the 1967 movie The Graduate. The duo agreed, and Paul contributed one half-finished song to the soundtrack. The resulting product was a major success in the theaters, and the soundtrack is, while not a proper Simon & Garfunkel album, an enjoyable listen nonetheless.

    I would most close liken this album to Beatles soundtrack albums here in the US - some originals with instrumentals in between. Now, only one of these instrumentals is the product of Simon & Garfunkel, and it's a short instrumental version of "Scarborough Fair," with the rest being the product of composer Dave Grusin. No surprise, you'll find these to be pretty hit or miss - typical lounge music stuff that I'm sure works a whole lot better as background noise to events in a movie in comparison to spinning it on a turntable and avidly listening. They aren't badly composed, far from it, but come back to me if you have "On the Strip" or "Sunporch Cha-Cha-Cha" on your playlist. These instrumentals have little of worth in the context of a Simon & Garfunkel record and, more than anything, makes for a relatively disjointed listening experience. I wouldn't say it makes the record cheat-y, but it makes it a pretty inconsistent record that has an overabundance of filler - maybe even more-so than their debut.

    So what about the Simon & Garfunkel material here? Well, you won't find much, and what you will find plays like a half-baked greatest hits compilation. "The Sound of Silence," "April Come She Will," and "Scarborough Fair" are all here, with the latter extended to six minutes. The first two are classic, and an acoustic rerecording of "The Sound\ of Silence" at the end of the record is probably the best thing here, but extending "Scarborough Fair" to six minutes makes it far too long in my eyes - textbook Wild Life Syndrome, although not nearly as damnable. An alternate version of "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" is here, a fun song no doubt, but without the tight harmonies it falls flat. What about "Mrs. Robinson," an all-time classic from the duo? Well, this isn't the hit version, but instead two short, minute long versions of the song. Did you get your money's worth?

    The Graduate may very well be the duo's weakest album, and yet I'm not so sure it's purely their fault. Simon's dry spell was certainly a factor for a lack of any new material, but a new album was out by April - that's a review for the future, though. Invariably, much of the album's issues can be boiled down to the fact that it's a soundtrack album, a breed of record where disjointed ideas and filler was commonplace at the time with very little exception. That isn't to say that this is a throwaway, and I do think there is some fun to be had here, but you're better off grabbing most other Simon & Garfunkel record. 

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

Listen to The Graduate.