Making his technical debut as a songwriter (technical in that his prose poems serve as a lyric source on several tracks),
Art Garfunkel takes top billing in what actually qualifies as a collaboration with two other singer/songwriters, Nashville's
Buddy Mondlock and L.A.-based
Maia Sharp; producer/songwriter
Billy Mann plays an essential creative role as well. For all the diverse input, this remains a
Garfunkel project at heart. His airy, delicate singing, remarkably identical in quality to his earliest recordings some 40 years earlier, provides the essential textural reference;
Mondlock's vocals uncannily replicate
Garfunkel's from the opening moments of "Bounce" and elsewhere throughout the album. Only two of these songs were written by outsiders, and these -- the self-consciously buoyant "Young and Free" and uncomfortably precious "What I Love About Rain" -- don't match the rest in either musical or lyrical accomplishment. Two in particular create near-magical spells, and both are draw from
Garfunkel's writing: "The Thread," a wistful chronicle of love lost amidst references to romantic landmarks in New York, and "Perfect Moment," an account of strangers exchanging glances in a theater lobby and achieving, in that timeless second, all the perfection and connection two people might expect. This performance, musically reminiscent of the
Simon & Garfunkel classic "For Emily," is exquisitely crafted and impeccably performed -- a high point not only here, but in all of
Garfunkel's catalog. ~ Robert L. Doerschuk