Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme |
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Released: October 10, 1966 Peak: 4 US, 15 UK, -- CN, 14 AU Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.06 UK, 7.0 world (includes US + UK) Genre: folk rock |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 27:55 |
Rating: 4.093 out of 5.00 (average of 17 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:“Simon & Garfunkel’s first masterpiece.” It “was the duo’s album about youthful exuberance and alienation, and it proved perennially popular among older, more thoughtful high-school students and legions of college audiences across generations.” “After the frantic rush to put together an LP in just three weeks that characterized the Sounds of Silence album early in 1966, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme came together over a longer gestation period of about three months, an uncommonly extended period of recording in those days.” BE “The album opens with one of the last vestiges of Paul Simon’s stay in England, Scarborough Fair/ Canticle — the latter was the duo’s adaptation of a centuries-old English folk song in an arrangement that Simon had learned from Martin Carthy. The two transformed the song into a daunting achievement in the studio, however, incorporating myriad vocal overdubs and utilizing a harpsichord, among other instruments, to embellish it, and also wove into its structure Simon’s ‘The Side of a Hill,’ a gentle antiwar song that he had previously recorded on The Paul Simon Songbook in England. The sonic results were startling on their face, a record that was every bit as challenging in its way as ‘Good Vibrations,’ but the subliminal effect was even more profound, mixing a hauntingly beautiful antique melody, and a song about love in a peaceful, domestic setting, with a message about war and death.” BE “The rest of the album was less imposing but just as beguiling – audiences could revel in the play of Simon’s mind (and Simon & Garfunkel’s arranging skills) and his sense of wonder (and frustration) on Patterns and appreciate the sneering rock & roll-based social commentary The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine. Two of the most beautiful songs ever written about the simple joys of living, the languid Cloudy and bouncy The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy), were no less seductive, and the album also included Homeward Bound.” BE “No Simon & Garfunkel song elicits more difference of opinion than The Dangling Conversation…one camp regards it as hopelessly pretentious and precious in its literary name-dropping and rich string orchestra accompaniment, while another holds it as a finely articulate account of a couple grown distant and disconnected through their intellectual pretentions; emotionally, it is definitely the precursor to the more highly regarded ‘Overs’ off the next album, and it resonated well on college campuses at the time, evoking images of graduate school couples drifting apart, but for all the beauty of the singing and the arrangement, it also seemed far removed from the experience of teenagers or any listeners not living a life surrounded by literature.” “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her was a romantic idyll that presented Art Garfunkel at his most vulnerable sounding…while Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall was Simon at his most reflectively philosophical, dealing with age and its changes much as ‘Patterns’ dealt with the struggle to change.” “A Simple Desultory Philippic, which also started life in England more than a year earlier, was the team’s Dylanesque fuzz tone-laden jape at folk-rock, and a statement of who they weren’t, and remains, alongside Peter, Paul & Mary’s ‘I Dig Rock & Roll Music,’ one of the best satires of its kind.” “The last of Simon’s English-period songs, A Poem on the Underground Wall, seemed to sum up the tightrope walk that the duo did at almost every turn on this record at this point in their career – built around a beautiful melody and gorgeous hooks, it was, nonetheless, a study in personal privation and desperation.” The album concluded with “7 O’Clock News/ Silent Night, a conceptual work that was a grim and ironic (and prophetic) comment on the state of the United States in 1966. In retrospect, it dated the album somewhat, but that final track, among the darkest album-closers of the 1960s, also proved that Simon & Garfunkel weren’t afraid to get downbeat as well as serious for a purpose.” |
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First posted 5/5/2011; last updated 10/9/2023. |
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