At least the originals show some promise. "Bleecker Street" combines an upbeat guitar part with a slightly melancholy vocal part to create an interesting bit of emotional ambiguity, "Sparrow" has a surprising amount of intensity for essentially being a quiet acoustic song, the straightforward protest of "He Was My Brother" (written back when Simon was going by the stage name Paul Kane) is maybe a little conventional lyrically but has such great singing (varying in mood between respectful and low-key angry) that I can forgive it, and the closing title track manages to have a very warm and pleasant vibe to it, at least until you read the lyrics and realize it's about somebody who's committed a crime and now has to go on the run and leave the woman he loves forever. The best, though, is clearly "The Sound of Silence," which stands out so incredibly that it barely feels like it's from the same album as the rest. The build in vocal intensity throughout, from the quiet subdued melancholy of the start to the bold defiance of the end, is an incredible achievement, and while I don't necessarily feel a deep connection with the message of the lyrics, I do feel like the duo make the listener at least stop and think about the lyrics, and that matters.

Still, while the originals are strong enough to make the album worth hearing, they're not enough to make the album stand out as much more than the answer to a trivia question (what was the name of the album where "The Sound of Silence" came from?). Serious fans will want to hear this, but more casual fans could easily just start with the next one and just pretend this one doesn't exist.

Any hesitancy the two had of working together in the future or of wading into using fuller arrangements in their songs became moot when circumstances threw them into the deep end of the pool without warning them. As previously mentioned, after "The Sound of Silence" finally started gaining some traction among college-age radio listeners, their producer, Tom Wilson, oversaw the creation of a rock remix of the song, without telling the group, and it became a smash hit; suddenly Simon & Garfunkel had emerged as a new hot commodity, and their recording company (CBS, with whom they still had a contract) told them to get in the studio and strike while the iron was hot. Well, they hadn't prepared for such an occurrence, and so the primary source of material for the album ultimately had to come from Simon's then-recent solo album, with songs from there re-recorded to properly assimilate Garfunkel into the sound.

From a certain perspective, the process that went into creating this album is such a mess that one might rightly assume that it's an inferior toss-off, at least in comparison to the more carefully constructed albums they would later do. Messy or not, though, I find this album a delight, where the highs are very high and the lows aren't especially low, and while it's maybe wanting for one or two more great songs to make it worthy of consideration as an upper-echelon sort of album, it's a thoroughly solid second-tier sort of album. The opening remix of "The Sound of Silence" isn't necessarily better than the original, but it's not worse either; the impact of the guitars is somewhat overstated, but having a solid rhythm section definitely gives the song a punch that gives it a new kind of power. The closing "I Am a Rock" is just as good as the opener and maybe better; "I have my books and my poetry to protect me / I am shielded in my armor / Hiding in my room, safe within my womb / I touch no one and no one touches me / I am a rock, I am an island" is a sentiment that introverted bookworms the world over can empathize with, and it's a sentiment not commonly expressed in rock music, let alone with such a bouncy chorus and sung with such glee (even though the underlying message of the song is a pretty sad one).

In between, the songs can be roughly divided into "not leftovers from Paul's solo album" and "leftovers from Paul's solo album," and both groups are roughly about as good as the other. The two tracks that S&G had recorded while on semi-hiatus are decent enough; "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" is essentially "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." with lyrics about needing to run away after committing a crime, but it still has charms that go beyond that simple description (like the horns!), and "We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'" has a neat electric piano part underneath and a horn part on top that together do a nice job of fleshing out a fun upbeat song that could have been a single in the hands of a less self-consciously serious band. "Richard Cory" is an angry song (not just in lyrics, but in how every guitar part, both acoustic and electric, just sounds pissed off) about a factory owner who seems to have everything one could want in life but ends up killing himself, written from the perspective of a factory worker who would still rather live a different life, and it's one of the band's better deep cuts (to the extent that anything on their Greatest Hits album can be called a "deep cut"). And finally, the instrumental "Anji" is a bit out of place, having been written by the guitarist Davey Graham a few years earlier, but it works in the context of the album, if only because "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" borrows its initial riff from "Anji," and the album ends up having a feeling of continuity from this that it would otherwise lack. The one slight blemish among this group is "Blessed," where the nagging guitar line sounds like it belongs to a group trying its best to sound like the Byrds but not knowing how to pull it off, and while I find its noisy pomp somewhat endearing, I could easily get why somebody could dislike it.

Among the "leftovers" selections, apart from "I Am a Rock," my favorite is "A Most Peculiar Man," which sounds like something along the lines of what The Kinks would record for Face to Face (released later in the year), as it's a character study of somebody who committed suicide, set over a droning organ and with nagging guitar and bass work throughout. I really like the others as well, though: "Leaves That Are Green" is just charming from start to finish (in the same way that "When I Grow Up to be a Man" by the Beach Boys is charming, both in the "I'm so old now, I'm in my early 20s!" lyrics and in the harpsichord), "Kathy's Song" is a lovely Simon-sung acoustic ballad with some rather enthralling guitar playing, and "April Come She Will" is a gorgeous Garfunkel-sung acoustic number that sounds like it belongs to another era and another world, even if the lyrics wouldn't immediately suggest that would be the case.

All told, this is a massive improvement on what had come before, and it rightly launched their career in earnest. I wouldn't get this one first necessarily (that would either be Greatest Hits or Bridge Over Troubled Water) but it should be heard early on, and probably before some of their better known and better regarded albums. Maybe it's not as polished as some of their other albums would be, but the rough messiness of this one ends up suiting them very well.

I don't want to say flat-out that "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" is a bad song, but it's a song that would have worked better if it had come from scores of other bands between 1966 and 1969. I appreciate that the band wanted to try something so far from its comfort zone (this is a sort of psychedelic folk blues rock satire on contemporary pop culture and advertising strategies), but as much as I typically appreciate garish experiments that lead to bands doing things they're not best at, this is so clumsily executed that I wish they'd kept it off the album (though maybe they just didn't have enough material otherwise). To a lesser extent, I'm not exactly wowed by "Cloudy" (which has the expected lovely vocals but just kinda drifts on by without leaving any sort of solid impression), and even "The Dangling Conversation," as much as it has elements of the "still-life watercolor" evoked in its lyrics (and as touching as the lyrics about a relationship drifting apart might be on a certain level), strikes me as a bit stilted (supposedly, Garfunkel came to strongly dislike this track). I'm also not thrilled with the way the album ends; the ending "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night" does sound deep and powerful in the moment when listening to the album, but it's also very cheap in its emotional manipulation, and part of me wishes that the band had gone a different route in ending the album.

The rest of the album is quite strong, fortunately. My favorites are the ones where, like on "April Come She Will" on the previous album, they show an ability to create a whole new mystical world with the power of their voices and the low-key instrumentation; "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" and "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" are both among the best arguments one can offer for the group as a major player in 60s rock history despite their relatively limited scope and ambition. The former transforms a traditional number into an experience that borders on heavenly thanks to the harmonies and the harpsichord, and the latter is nothing but Garfunkel vocals and acoustic guitar, and it is simultaneously both the simplest and most complicated song on the album because of this (seriously, just listen to his part carefully and how it works against the guitar).

Of the other six songs, four can be considered relatively standard folk songs to some extent or another, but they're all quite nice in their own way. "Homeward Bound" features an especially warm and nostalgic Simon vocal (with Garfunkel on harmonies), and the way he eases from fast to slow and back again is essentially a songwriting clinic in and of itself. "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" is a song that only Simon & Garfunkel could have written and performed, with a light-on-its-feet jazzy feel from the vocals and the subtle drums that conveys warm youthful optimism as well as anything could. "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall" (originally found on The Paul Simon Songbook) is a brisk number with the two taking turns on who leads and who harmonizes, and the long windup to each time they get to sing the title is an utter delight. And finally, "A Poem on the Underground Wall" could have been forgettable in the hands of a lot of groups, but somehow they manage to paint a picture of both whimsy and slight anxiety in their depiction of a subway graffiti artist, and the nagging drum part does a good job of depicting anxiously running feet.

The last two, as with "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall," were originally from Simon's solo album, and they are each very different from the standard S&G pattern and are each pretty fun. "Patterns" is a psychedelic folk song that 1000% sounds like a product of 1966 (even though it was written in 1965), with chaotic acoustic lines crashing into a surprisingly memorable vocal melody with lyrics like "From the moment of my birth / To the instant of my death / There are patterns I must follow / Just as I must breathe each breath / Like a rat in a maze / The path before me lies / And the pattern never alters / Until the rat dies." It's absolutely bonkers, both on its own and in context, but I like it a lot. And finally, "A Simple Desultory Philippic" is basically an elaborate parody of Dylan's style after turning electric in 1965, and it works both on its own terms and in terms of making fun of its subject matter (the nonstop references to Dylan lyrics and other prominent musicians of the day could seem stupid until you realize that there was absolutely a plausible alternate universe where Dylan himself could have combined all of these songs into a single song just for the hell of it). Every time I get to the end of the song and Simon just says "Folk rock" I basically die of laughter inside.

All told, this is a really nice album, and if I can't quite consider it as belonging to any sort of greatness tier, I think it's a very nice inclusion to the band's discography regardless. If you're only familiar with the tracks from the Greatest Hits album, this is worth hearing to get better acquainted with some of the lesser known material (even if other lesser known material here somewhat deserves to be forgotten).

Aside from the treat of getting to hear so much material in a way that one wouldn't necessarily expect in 1967 (both because of the arrangement changes and because it's pretty amazing that the songs from the debut end up having such strong staying power), there's also the matter of the stories they tell, which are absolutely worth not skipping (especially the long tale relating to the cover art for their debut album and how it eventually led Paul to write "Poem on the Underground Wall"). Both of them play the "gosh gee whiz this is sure great to be here" role in a way that's so comfortable and lived-in that it becomes clear that they both actually had tremendous polish and charisma and knew how to play a part. That's not an insult, mind you; it's a recognition of how far each of them had come in a relatively short amount of time.

If you're only going to buy one S&G live album, this is the one to get. No, it doesn't have the full span of their catalogue to draw from, so it may disappoint someone whose primary interest in the band is "Mrs. Robinson" or "The Boxer," but this album strikes me as more necessary and revelatory than later live albums from them could ever hope for. And really, that's the whole point of live albums in the first place.

The first half of the album has two tracks that I would consider as highlights, and a whole lot of well-harmonized, well-produced tedium otherwise. "Save the Life of My Child" is one of their most atypical tracks, but I find it a blast; the prominent Moog bassline, the assault of sound and voices, and all of the various other sound effects combine with a rousing acoustic guitar part and powerful vocals to create something that probably sounded mind-blowing in 1968 and still sounds like an interesting psychedelic exercise decades onward. The other highlight, of course, is the beautiful and majestic "America," which does a great job of capturing that time in life when it seems like you could potentially go anywhere and do anything. In a certain sense, I somewhat prefer Yes' eventual cover of this (where they'd stretch it into 10+ minutes and otherwise desecrate it), but the atmosphere and harmonies of this one are untouchable (Garfunkel's high harmonies in the last minute or so are especially awe-inspiring). Sadly. though, the rest of this side does very little for me. The "Bookends Theme" that opens and closes the side is lovely in a certain sense but overly precious without enough memorability to compensate in another sense, and both "Overs" and "Old Friends" (which surround "Voices of Old People" which at least delivers what it promises) just drift on by without doing any a single thing that would make me like them. Overall, this side just leaves me baffled every time I listen to it, and whenever I finish the first side I have a very bad taste in my mouth for the album as a whole.

Thank goodness for the second side. The big highlight, of course, is "Mrs. Robinson," where great acoustic guitar lines are combined with vocal parts that alternate between wordless and scamp-ish in a playful way, with lines like the famous nod to Joe Dimaggio that instantly bring memory to an idealized version of America that was quickly fading into the past. The others are no slouch, though. "Fakin' It" has layers of strings and brass tucked underneath a song that's ultimately driven by a solid acoustic line and a great rhythm (punctuated effectively by hand claps), and I'm always impressed by the build of tension in the verses that swells and then dissipates in the chorus. "Punky's Dilemma" is based around the same general idea as "59th Bridge Street Song," with the same sort of "skipping down the street because life is just a delight" feel to it, but the actual musical details are different enough to eliminate any sense of repetition, and the ending whistling is just oh so whimsical. "A Hazy Shade of Winter" (originally recorded during the sessions for PSRT and released as a single back in 1966) is one of their very best songs in the vein of folk-rock, with a melancholy vibe in the lyrics and delivery that stands at odds (in a good way) with the upbeat and angry music underneath it, and I find the way it just suddenly crashes into "At the Zoo" without a proper ending fascinating. And finally, "At the Zoo" (released as a single in early 1967) imagines the social dynamics of the various zoo animals when people aren't around, and the contrast between the quiet introduction and breaks, on the one hand, and the more upbeat main song (with that great piano line buried underneath and other rock instrumentation piled on top), on the other hand, provides a fascinating effect.

In short, by the end, I really like this album, but in the course of listening to it, I also really dislike this album, and my feelings about it end up as messy as the album itself. It's really no wonder to me that, when they finally got around to making another album after this, it sounded nothing like this; in too many ways this album comes across as something from SIMON & garfunkel, and that imbalance, among so many other things, causes this album to fall well short of its potential. I can absolutely understand why a fan of the band could potentially consider this their best and even an all-time great album, but if you're a novice to the band, I would advise going in with at least a little skepticism.

The first half of this album is just about perfect. The title track has somewhat gone down in history as one of their most iconic songs, which is interesting because it's also one of their least typical; it's long by their standards (almost 5 minutes), the sound and feel is giant and unrestrained, and most importantly, Garfunkel sings the lead vocal solo (with just a smattering of Simon harmonies here and there). In a certain sense, the song is almost ridiculously overblown (it's essentially a gospel song done with a Phil Spector wall of sound), and I suppose that, in another sense, the final verse stretches the song a little longer than it might naturally want to go. And yet, the effect is overwhelming (for instance, I find that final verse gorgeous from start to finish), and when I get to the end of the song, no matter how many times I hear it, my internal reaction is always along these lines:

Up next is "El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could)," the first (but certainly not the last) instance of Paul Simon's fascination with world music, in which he takes a 1913 folk song from Peru (with very traditional arrangements) and adds his own vocal melody, and somehow the combination of the two styles ends up blending seamlessly. "Cecilia" is a jaunty folk-rock song with a fascinating arrangement (the combination of the acoustic guitar with the weird percussive effect with the xylophone with whatever else is shoved in there should be a total mess but somehow works perfectly) and hilarious lyrics that are essentially a PG-rated version of something like "When U Were Mine," and the tale of woe followed by happiness of the protagonist cracks me up every time I hear it. "Keep the Customer Satisfied" is a hilariously chipper number about the difficulties that come with a career that involves making sure a large number of people with differing opinions are each happy enough to want to keep giving you money, and the line "I hear words I never heard in the Bible" never fails to make me smile at how corny and yet how perfect is. And finally, "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" initially struck me as somewhat of a throwaway, but I can't understand that opinion at all now: it's a surprisingly dense and varied and moody song with great subtle singing, and the fact that it was secretly Simon's pre-emptive warning to Garfunkel that the group was about to break up (Garfunkel had planned to become an architect before he had become a musician) gives it an emotional punch that goes beyond a literal reading of the song.

The second half starts on another amazing note with "The Boxer," which the group released as a single about a year before the rest of the album came out, and which is another song that's established itself as one of the group's iconic songs even though it's completely atypical. The main portion of the song is a sad and semi-autobiographical ballad in which the singer feels oppressed by the world and those around him, and it's really strong in its own right, but of course it's in the extended coda where the song really makes it to another level. The intensity and darkness of the coda grows until it becomes overwhelming (in a similar way as the coda to "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"), and when the storm dissipates, the feeling of relief is palpable.

The rest of the album is a little underwhelming in comparison to what came before, but not enough for me to drop the grade too far (a full album that maintained the quality of the material through "The Boxer" would be close to an all-time great, whereas the material that follows pulls it a little below there). "The Only Living Boy in New York" isn't an amazing ballad, but it has some lovely bits, such as the harmonies that emerge at about 1:20, and parts of the verses are as charming as anything else they would ever do. The closing "Song for the Asking" is a minor delight as well, ending the album on a gentle night and a melodic twist that I enjoy every time, and while I'm not sure it's the ideal way to end the album, I'm also not really sure which song I would put in its place. As for the others, well, I like the energy of "Baby Driver," and I'd probably like the song more if it was on Sounds of Silence, but I find it a bit underwhelming after "The Boxer," and the other two ("Why Don't You Write Me" and a live cover of "Bye Bye Love") are decent. I wish they'd been scattered elsewhere in the album to reduce the sense of the album as one that's so heavily front-loaded, but oh well.

And that was it! They decided to take a break from each other, and the short break turned into a permanent split in the group, aside from occasional appearances together when they had a common political cause (or a need for some quick cash) they could focus upon rather than thinking of how much they disliked each other. While I strongly wish this album could have had a follow-up, I'll take what I can get. There's no good reason for someone who likes 60s pop music not to own a copy of this album in some form, even if they don't consider themselves a fan of the group.

This live album has all the makings of a very solid listen, and I wouldn't think twice if somebody told me they loved this, yet I find that, as much as I find it superficially pleasant, this album leaves me a little cold. Part of this is because of the presence of so much Paul Simon solo material (along with one perfunctory Art Garfunkel solo number so that the imbalance wasn't quite so stark): I admit I'm not extremely familiar with his solo career, but I know the major hits and have heard his most famous albums, and generally speaking they've never especially impressed me. I get that songs like "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" have all of the formal elements I would want in a solid 70s pop-rocker, and I certainly don't hate songs like this, but they make almost no impression on me for better or worse. As for the S&G material, well, there's just something that bothers me about hearing these songs outside of their original 60s context in a way that doesn't bother me in hearing material from other prominent 60s artists outside their original context. There's an oddly embalmed feel to these performances that's inescapable from the beginning, despite all of Simon's repeated insistence of how much they're rocking out and how much noise they're making; from the start, every time a new track starts, I inevitably find myself wishing that I was listening to either the original studio version or a live version from the 60s, and that stands at odds with my desire for any live album to have tracks that I would want to come back to from time to time as alternatives to their studio counterparts.

From here, the two of them would perform together occasionally, then go long periods without speaking to each other, and this went on until they reached a point where sustained tours together became unlikely and unwanted. They did record another live album together in 2003, and maybe I'll force myself to listen to that one someday, but as much as any major act from the 60s, these guys are best heard in the 60s and only the 60s.