Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" Pretty much the swan song for this pair, though they've never entirely gone away, certainly not as solo acts, where Garfunkel has perhaps acquitted himself best as a decent if too infrequent film actor, among other achievements, and Simon has proved to be a durable and sometimes great if occasionally effete and overly self-involved singer/songwriter. This album is patchy, more or less their Let It Be, a pastiche (popular move for the times, evidently, meaning 1970), but when it hits its stride it swells into something magnificent, as on the title song or "The Boxer," memorable hits of our lifetimes, so to speak. (I'm really giving away the whole boomer store here, but so be it.) It also spawned a couple more in the goofy throwaway "Cecilia" and the reliable "El Condor Pasa" (the Peruvian folk tune covered and covered and covered elsewhere and everywhere). By the time of its release I couldn't allow myself to take much advantage of the pleasures, too caught up in the intricacies of high school posturing, except for what streamed from the radio. But that was all right. The hits remain pretty much the best of what's here, and, as with oh say "It's Too Late" or "Help Me" or even "Stairway to Heaven," radio stations of the time were generous with them.