There goes hymning Simon

Has the veteran singer-songwriter come down with an elegy?

- GRAHAM REID

SEVEN PSALMS, by Paul Simon

Towards the end of Robert Hilburn's chunky 2018 biography of Paul Simon, the singer-songwriter says his next project will be reworking and rerecording some of his lesser-known songs.

His friend, the artist Chuck Close, dismisses the idea: "He'll never finish that album, it won't be challenging enough."

However, Simon - known for stubborn doggedness, as when insisting his Broadway musical The Capeman go ahead despite being clearly doomed as an artistic and commercial failure - did finish that album, In the Blue Light.

Now retired from touring, 81-year-old Simon returns with another self-imposed challenge, this ambitious acoustic album, his first album of new material since 2016's excellent Stranger to Stranger.

Seven Psalms runs as a single 33-minute body of work in movements of The Lord/Love Is Like a Braid/My Professional Opinion/Your Forgiveness/ Trail of Volcanoes/The Sacred Harp/Wait.