GARFUNKEL & GARFUNKEL
Father And Son (BMG)
Garfunkel senior, he of ‘Simon &’ fame, brings his trademark tenderness and exquisite harmonising to an album of carefully selected covers with his son, Art Garfunkel Jnr, Father And Son. And it really is very beautiful: full of pitch-perfect poignancy, with the familial angle being exploited for its rich vocal timbre but not overplayed for sentimentality.
Art the elder’s voice has become somewhat slurred with age and Art the son, who boasts a pleasant modern singer-songwriter style, tends to hold the higher harmonies that would have been the father’s area of expertise for most of his career. Opener Blue Moon sets the tone with a velvety arrangement, though Don McLean’s Vincent – which follows straight after – and a couple of others feel a little overdone.
If there’s a highlight, it’s hearing the pair duetting on Paul Simon’s Old Friends, with a stunning re-harmonised section which must have been a joy for Art to arrange 56 years after he first sung it. The big surprise, meanwhile, is how effective their version of the Eurythmics’ Here Comes The Rain Again is, with the orchestral arrangement and earnest voices coming together quite perfectly.
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES
