Album review: Carly Simon's 'Never Been Gone'

Artists who re-record touchstone songs from their catalogs, as Carly Simon does on her latest full-length collection, take on the burden of coming up with something different enough to make that material newly relevant. Perhaps not surprisingly, her tour through her nearly four-decade catalog succeeds best when she mixes things up the most.

The opening reading of "The Right Thing to Do" is pleasant, but it seems eerily close to what the song might have sounded like in the hands of her ex, James Taylor -- the presence here of their musician son, Ben, could have something to do with that. Things pick up, however, with the vintage R&B groove of "It Happens Every Day," then deepen with a sophisticated treatment of "Boys in the Trees."

"You're So Vain" turns wistful rather than spiteful, while "You Belong to Me" is given a sultry Latin jazz arrangement, possibly an outgrowth of her Brazilian-tinged 2008 album "This Kind of Love." "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," is more melancholy than when she released it in 1971 thanks to simple finger-picked guitar backing sweetened with strings and flutes.

What Simon does here is flip through the musical photo album and talk honestly about what place those old memories hold in her life now.

-- Randy Lewis

Carly Simon
"Never Been Gone"
Iris Records
Three stars (Out of four)

Comments

[Stella]

Looking forward to hearing the album but am very disappointed with the truly horrible and cheap-looking cover photo and artwork.

[Wayne]

3 stars?
R U nuts?
I like Carly Simon but these r VERY mediocre versions of good tunes.
Why go back? We've already heard these classics from the original artist. O yeah! She is the original artist.

[jlgottfred]

After reading Randy Lewis' critique I thought he could only be 20 something But after investigating I found he has reviewed pop music for the Los Angeles Times since 1981. Has he forgotten that CS offered a wonderful and sophisticated respite from the torrid and often banal songs that were emblematic of the '70's? I think so. Few of CS's contemporaries could remix their songs the way she has. Far fewer can match her in lyrics and vocal quality. Hate to say it Randy, but you should get your hearing checked.

JLGottfred.

[Andy]

I think this is really a kind and positive review of this album.
I absolutely don't understand why the previous commenter jlgottfred has a problem with the review and why he or she questions the author's credibility and understanding of the subject.

This may be news to you, jlgottfred: Just because you think that Carly Simon is the greatest genius on earth doesn't mean that this is the ultimate truth or that everyone should somehow be forced to have the same opinion.

He or she seems to be a very devoted member of the Carly cult - a very special crop of people popping up on the internet to insult people whenever someone says something a bit less enthusiastic than "Carly Simon is the greatest artist and human being in the history of this universe".

To say it politely: I don't think that this breed of fans makes Carly look particularly good. She seems to attract the overenthusiastic and intolerant folks - not something I'd be proud of, if I were her.

I like Carly Simon a lot and have all her albums, but this tribe of her fans have been making me really sick since I first encountered them on the internet (which was when I first got access to the internet, over a decade ago).
Calm down, Carly fans.