Paul Simon

Hearts and Bones was a commercial disaster, the lowest-charting new studio album of Paul Simon's career. It is also his most personal collection of songs, one of his most ambitious, and one of his best. It retains a personal vision, one largely devoted to the challenges of middle-aged life, among them a renewed commitment to love; the title song was a notable testament to new romance, while "Train in the Distance" reflected on romantic discord. Elsewhere, "The Late Great Johnny Ace" was his meditation on John Lennon's murder and how it related to the mythology of pop music. Musically, Simon moved forward and backward simultaneously, taking off from the jazz fusion style of his last two albums into his old loves of doo wop and rock & roll while also incorporating current sounds with such new collaborators as dance music producer Nile Rodgers and minimalist composer Philip Glass. The result was Simon's most impressive collection in a decade and the most underrated album in his catalog. [In 2004, Warner Strategic Marketing reissued Simon's studio albums as remastered editions with bonus tracks, packaged in a cardboard digipack. Like the other entries in WSM's Paul Simon reissue series, the remastering on this is excellent, giving it a warmth that this introspective album needs. The album is graced with four previously unreleased bonus tracks: the work-in-progress "Shelter of Your Arms" and solo acoustic demos of "Train in the Distance," "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War," and "The Late Great Johnny Ace."] ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide