Sony Music
What is going on?
During the pandemic I went into my favourite record shop and discovered that the most played record in that shop over the past couple of weeks was entitled Psalms. It was a brisk acoustic guitar album with the lyrics of a selection of Biblical psalms in Hebrew!
Then Nick Cave, one of my favourite singers released a fascinating 10-inch album called Litanies. They are a series of laments arising out of a challenging time in the singer’s life, that included the depth of two of his children.
Now this week we have the latest album by Paul Simon; it is also called Seven Psalms. It is a stripped back acoustic album with some great songs and lovely arrangements. Simon, brought up as a Jew, returns to the Psalms of David to explore matters of life, God, and the universe. The uncertainties of the pandemic and the awareness of his own mortality has drawn a brilliant body of work. The seven psalms merge into one another as a kind of tone plaintive tone poem.
What interested me was the process of bringing this album to birth.
It began with a strange dream that said: “… you’re supposed to write a piece called Seven Psalms.” It continued with looking at the biblical psalms, the writing of some guitar pieces and then the experience of waking up at 3:30-5am and writing down snatches of words that were given to him. Simon realised that he could not overthink this project or try to embellish it.
“I started to recognise that sometimes things happen, and all have to do is just make sure it doesn’t get messed up as it passes through you.”
The veteran songwriter – he’s 81 – has produced a mesmerizing, intriguing meditative piece that will delight and disturb in equal measure. Excellent instrumentation, brilliant lyrics, and a guest appearance from his wife on a couple of the segments enhances the record. This suite of songs is a fascinating ‘thinking out loud’ of the tussle in the writer’s mind between faith and doubt, that is summed up well in the following words:
I have my reasons to doubt
The white light eases the pain
Two billion heartbeats and out
Or does it all begin again?
John Woods is a writer and Bible teacher based in West Sussex. He is Director of Training at the School of Preachers in Riga, Latvia.
