It's an odd time to evaluate Paul Simon's solo career in light of his successful 2004 reunion tour with Art Garfunkel. But maybe all that boomer nostalgia needs a little levity, and the sweep of his solo work proves Simon has never dwelled on the past. The Studio Recordings 1972-2000 is that rare bird—an attempt to collect an artist's entire oeuvre.
First released in CD form in 1992, Fragments Of A Rainy Season marked a crucial, pivotal point in the life and career of our greatest living Welshman. After years of alcohol and drug addiction had turned his life into a full-blown shambles, Cale swapped whiskey and cocaine for regular games of squash and full-time commitment to parenthood in the early '90s. Far from blunting his creative edge, sobriety and responsibility appeared to free him up to take greater risks in the studio, and brought the kind of focus that enabled him to hone his live act down to something like perfection.
Macaulay Culkin (contractually refusing to kiss any men—fact) blows hard but fails to convince as camp '90s New York club cyclone Michael Alig. Seth Green's equally berserk, but when Alig brags of murdering his buddy/dealer, everyone assumes he's kidding. Much gay disco muzak, and cameos from Marilyn Manson and Chloe Sevigny, but this is no Last Days Of Disco or even 54.
