Though it was released to coincide with the opening of the film
One-Trick Pony
, which
Paul Simon
wrote and starred in, the
album is not a
soundtrack
, as it is sometimes categorized, at least, not exactly. If it were, it might contain the
song
"Soft Parachutes"
and other non-
Simon
music featured in the movie. Instead, this is a studio album containing many of the movie songs, some of them in the same performances (two were cut live at
the Agora Club
in Cleveland). The record is not billed as a
, but a sleeve note reads, "The music on this Compact Disc was created for the Paul Simon Movie 'One-Trick Pony.'" Anyway, if
was in fact writing songs for
Jonah
, his movie character (as seems true of songs like
"Jonah,"
"God Bless the Absentee,"
and
"Long, Long Day"
), he intended that character to take a somewhat less considered lyrical viewpoint than
generally does, but to be even more enamored of light
jazz fusion
than
had been on his last album,
Still Crazy After All These Years
. Tasty licks abound from the fretwork of
Eric Gale
,
Hiram Bullock
, and
Hugh McCracken
, and the rhythm section of
Steve Gadd
Tony Levin
Richard Tee
is equally in the groove. This is the closest thing to a band album
ever made, and it contains some of his most rhythmic and energetic singing. But it is also his most uneven album, simply because the songwriting, with the exception of the title song and the
ballads
"How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns"
"Nobody,"
is not up to his usual standard. Maybe he was too busy writing his screenplay to polish these songs to the usual gloss. (It can't have been than
wasn't supposed to be as talented as
. Could it?) In any case, though the album spawned a Top Ten hit in
"Late in the Evening"
and may have sold more copies than the film did tickets, it remained a disappointment in both artistic and commercial terms. ~ William Ruhlmann