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Simon & Garfunkel on Numbered Limited Edition 180g
LP from Mobile Fidelity Pressed at RTI!
Rolling Stone Named the 202nd Greatest Album of All
Time!
Songs for All Time: Simon and Garfunkel's Kaleidoscopic Parsley, Sage,
Rosemary and Thyme Includes "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "Homeward Bound," and
"The 59th Street Bridge Song"
Mastered on Mobile Fidelity's World-Renowned Mastering System: 180g Vinyl LP
Brings to Light Meticulous Production, Harmonies, and Tones in Lifelike Clarity
The liner notes pioneering writer Ralph J. Gleason penned for the back cover of
Simon and Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme ring as true now as they
did upon the record's original release in 1966. He mused: "Today's popular
music is in good shape indeed – at least the portion of it represented by this
album. It has strength and it has beauty, it has lyricism, meaning and, above
all, that quality of broad appeal which still retains form. And its music speaks
for more than the moment. The songs in this album are songs for all time."
Indeed, they are, and they can now be experienced in the highest fidelity
they've ever enjoyed.
Mastered on Mobile Fidelity's world-renowned mastering system and pressed at RTI,
this 180g vinyl LP presents the famed duo's landmark third record in superlative
sound. Reflecting the perfectionist-minded nature of Bob Johnston's meticulous
production and the group's painstaking arrangements, Mobile Fidelity's
reissue brings to light textures, nuances, details, and microdynamics obscured
on prior editions. The hyper-realistic results give you a seat at the
recording studio.
The first Simon and Garfunkel set captured on an eight-track recorder,
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme here bursts with colors crucial to the scope
of the songs. Separation between vocals and guitars, images of individual
players, and the dimensions of the wide-spanning soundstages all flourish.
Harmonies crest and seemingly float on bypassing clouds. Acoustic passages
blossom with lifelike structure and tone. The intent of deliberate euphonic
variations – like those between the pair's singing and Charlie O'Donnell's
spoken news report on the closing "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night," which function
as both poetic and social commentary – is made clearer by way of the LP's
reference-caliber transparency.
Such punctiliousness is exactly what the duo pursued during their four months in
the studio, considered then by record-company executives to be borderline
excessive. Yet there's no arguing with the end results of a benchmark work
Rolling Stone named the 202nd Greatest Album of All Time. Again, it proves wise
to refer again to Gleason, whose observations about Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and
Thyme's character remain spot-on.
"There's a delicate musical design of almost lapidarian detail. It has
vitality but it is control, the sounds being made deliberately for the artist's
conscious purpose," he notes, before continuing, "Take the glorious
kaleidoscope of rushing feelings, blowing winds, shifting colors, bursting moods
of joy and exultation in ‘Cloudy.' The song is effervescent, one is refreshed
hearing it."
Revitalization – and the wellspring of emotions that accompany it – endure as
the most attractive aspect of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Simon and
Garfunkel achieve the feat time and again via interwoven harmonies, folk
devices, revealing contrasts, vocal blending, spiritual imagery, and soaring
melodies. The material is at once beautiful and evocative, pristine and natural,
serious and joyful, pertinent and accessible. And while the individual appeal of
chestnuts like "Homeward Bound," "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "The 59th Street
Bridge Song," and "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" remain iconic, the sum of
the whole makes this 1966 masterwork a paramount expression of unbridled
creativity and communal vision.
Features:
• Numbered, Limited Edition
• Mastered by Krieg Wunderlich, assisted by Rob LoVerde at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab on the GAIN 2 ULTRA ANALOG SYSTEM™
• Specially Plated and Pressed on 180 grams of High Definition Vinyl
• Special Static Free - Dust Free Inner Sleeve
• Heavy Duty Protective Packaging
• Pressed at RTI
Selections:
Side 1:
1. Scarborough Fair/Canticle
2. Patterns
3. Cloudy
4. Homeward Bound
5. The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
6. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)
Side 2:
1. The Dangling Conversation
2. Flowers Never Bend In The Rainfall
3. A Simple Desultory Philppic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)
4. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
5. A Poem On The Underground Wall
6. 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night