The Watermark of GARFUNKEL

Original released on LP Columbia JC 34975

(US, January 1978)

The original idea was for Art Garfunkel to record an album of songs written by Jimmy Webb. But when the leadoff single, "Crying in My Sleep," failed to make the charts, Columbia Records withdrew the album and induced Garfunkel to put together a cover of Sam Cooke's "(What A) Wonderful World" with Paul Simon and James Taylor harmonizing. The single and a revised version of the album then made the Top 40. But "Watermark" is still a Garfunkel-Sings-Webb album, except for one song. And the initial idea was a good one: Garfunkel handles Webb's wistful pop songs well, and he has made good choices from Webb's songbook, dating back to the '60s, though avoiding his big bits. The result is Garfunkel's most cohesive solo album. [The original version of "Watermark", on test pressings and only a very few commercial copies, was available briefly in October, 1977. The revised version, containing "[What A] Wonderful World," was released in January, 1978.] (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

ART GARFUNKEL: "Breakaway"

Original Released on LP, October 1975
UK: CBS 40 86002 - US: Columbia PC 33700

Soft, lush pop for winding down after hours, maybe after a night about town like on the iconic album cover shot of ladies' man Garfunkel. Opens beautifully with Stevie Wonder's "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" and continues smoothly down the line of cover songs with highlights like the wonderful "99 Miles from L.A.", "Waters of March", an angelic rendition of "I Only Have Eyes for You", "Break Away", "Disney Girls", "Rag Doll" and the Simon & Garfunkel reunion "My Little Town". A good choice for when you need some peaceful and pleasant pop tunes. (in RateYourMusic)

The second time around, Art Garfunkel turned to pop producer Richard Perry, who liked to record in studios rather than cathedrals and who replaced the angelic style of the first album with a lush pop approach. The result was Garfunkel's best-selling album. The title track and a cover of "I Only Have Eyes for You" reached the Top 40 (the latter topped the U.K. charts), though the most prominent song was the Simon & Garfunkel reunion single "My Little Town." But the album was full of wise pop choices, among them Bruce Johnston's "Disney Girls," Stevie Wonder's "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)," and Hal David and Albert Hammond's "99 Miles from L.A." Perry proved that, given the right material and production, the problem of the relative sameness of Garfunkel's vocal approach could be overcome. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

ART GARFUNKEL Debut Album

Original Released on LP Columbia KC 31474 (stereo)

(US, September 1973)

Garfunkel (he was billed without his first name here) had a lot riding on his debut solo album, and "Angel Clare", named after a character in Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, lived up to the heightened expectations for the man who had sung "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and other Simon & Garfunkel favorites. Garfunkel took no chances, issuing as the first single Jimmy Webb's "All I Know", which was arranged in a similar style to "Bridge" and made the Top Ten. Elsewhere on the record, Garfunkel took a more spirited approach, notably on a version of Van Morrison's "I Shall Sing" that was reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia" and made the Top 40. Certainly, there was enough firepower on the record, which featured guitarists Jerry Garcia and J.J. Cale. But much of it was filled with stately, orchestra-laden ballads, sung by Garfunkel in his naïve, breathy tenor. If Simon & Garfunkel had been the thinking man's Everly Brothers, Garfunkel alone turned out to be the thinking man's Johnny Mathis. (in AllMusic)

ART GARFUNKEL: "Everything Waits to Be Noticed" (With MAIA SHARP And BUDDY MONDLOCK)

Original released on CD Manhattan 7243 5 40990 2 1

(EU, 2002)

Making his technical debut as a songwriter (technical in that his prose poems serve as a lyric source on several tracks), Art Garfunkel takes top billing in what actually qualifies as a collaboration with two other singer/songwriters, Nashville's Buddy Mondlock and L.A.-based Maia Sharp; producer/songwriter Billy Mann plays an essential creative role as well. For all the diverse input, this remains a Garfunkel project at heart. His airy, delicate singing, remarkably identical in quality to his earliest recordings some 40 years earlier, provides the essential textural reference; Mondlock's vocals uncannily replicate Garfunkel's from the opening moments of "Bounce" and elsewhere throughout the album. Only two of these songs were written by outsiders, and these - the self-consciously buoyant "Young and Free" and uncomfortably precious "What I Love About Rain" - don't match the rest in either musical or lyrical accomplishment. Two in particular create near-magical spells, and both are draw from Garfunkel's writing: "The Thread," a wistful chronicle of love lost amidst references to romantic landmarks in New York, and "Perfect Moment," an account of strangers exchanging glances in a theater lobby and achieving, in that timeless second, all the perfection and connection two people might expect. This performance, musically reminiscent of the Simon & Garfunkel classic "For Emily," is exquisitely crafted and impeccably performed - a high point not only here, but in all of Garfunkel's catalog. (Robert Doerschuk in AllMusic)

ART GARFUNKEL: "Some Enchanting Evening"

Original released on CD ATCO R2 74851

(US, January 2007)

There is a strangeness that is nearly otherworldly in hearing Art Garfunkel - half of one of the most enduring duo's in rock's history books - singing pop standards. Garfunkel was primarily a harmony vocalist in his duo with Paul Simon, but it was that voice that added authority and excitement to their recordings. His own solo records have been less successful, perhaps because he was a never a songwriter per se, though he has written. On 2002's "Everything Waits to Be Noticed", he worked with Maia Sharp and Buddy Mondlock and the result was deeply satisfying. "Some Enchanted Evening"'s material is most appealing because it is so well known and has been interpreted by some of the greatest singers in history - Sinatra, Bennett, Washington, Fitzgerald, Vaughan, just to name a few - and it's also the most treacherous. Let's face it, Rod Stewart's multi-volume "Great American Songbook" series sold well, but it was a critical and musical disaster because he has no idea how to phrase these songs: he sounded like a rock vocalist trying to swing (and he didn't pull it off at all.) Here, Garfunkel claims in a liner comment that he is "under the sway of two magnificent singers: Chet Baker and Johnny Mathis." OK. But he has neither Baker's dryly vulnerable restraint nor Mathis' grand sense of drama. Garfunkel tries a naturalist approach to songs by Johnny Mercer ("I Remember You"), George & Ira Gershwin ("Someone to Watch Over Me"), Harold Arlen ("Let's Fall in Love"), Antonio Carlos Jobim ("Quiet Nights" [aka "Corcovado"]); Lerner & Loewe ("I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"), Irving Berlin ("What'll I Do"), and Rodgers & Hammerstein ("If I Loved You"); and that's only about half. The first three alone are, for all their beauty, barbed wire fences with lipstick and perfume traces left on their pointed spires. Perhaps it's also why Garfunkel wrote on another panel "It wasn't Monet, it was France..." In other words, he was seduced by both the dreamy nature of the material, and its magical, love-soaked melodic and lyric lines as well as his being spellbound by the two previously mentioned singers. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the voice to pull this off. His sense of subtlety is too prevalent here. His voice lacks that phrasing that Baker's had, where he sang like he played trumpet. The subtlety in Baker's delivery was vulnerability that had an edge. Here, Garfunkel's so soft , one could crush his voice and, worse yet, the song, in an alley. His breathy delivery is also fraught with a kind of unwelcome rawness that contributes to his lack of authority. Check the break and crack in "I'm So Glad There Is You." There are a few places here where his singing fits the material or brings something new to it: on "Quiet Nights," his softness is exactly what the song demands, a whisper nearly from the one who articulates not only lyric, but the rhythm. The best performance on the album is in "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," where Garfunkel sings clear and true; there's no smoke or whisper in the grain of his voice, just the way the material finds its way inside him and he lets it out naturally, without artifice. The other nagging flaws here are the arrangements: the strange pedal steel guitar (played by Dean Parks), with the synth strings and woodwinds are just awful; the drum loops on "You Stepped Out of a Dream," and the weird, weird weird synth bass on "Some Enchanted Evening." What these arrangements do is force the singer into a different place, one full of smoke and mirrors where the tune isn't there, just its framework, leaving too much weight on the vocalist to bring it all together. Art Garfunkel is, when he wants to be, a singular vocalist who possesses gentleness, power and emotional authenticity, when he wishes to. It is almost totally absent on "Some Enchanted Evening". (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

ART GARFUNKEL: "Scissors Cut"

Original released on LP Columbia FC 37392

(US, April 1981)

After the disappointment of "Fate for Breakfast", Art Garfunkel returned to old friends for his fifth solo album, co-producing with Roy Halee, who had worked with Simon & Garfunkel and on Garfunkel's debut album, "Angel Clare", and singing several songs written by Jimmy Webb, who had written nearly all the songs on Garfunkel's third album, "Watermark". But though "Scissors Cut" came closer to the sound of a good Garfunkel album, material remained a problem. "A Heart in New York," the LP's sole American chart single, was second-rate, as were many of the other compositions, Garfunkel scored a surprise number one hit in Great Britain with the Mike Batt-written and produced "Bright Eyes," the theme from the movie "Watership Down", but that wasn't enough to make the album on the whole a success, Garfunkel then re-teamed with Paul Simon for a world concert tour, and it was five years before he was back in record stores with the seasonal release "The Animals' Christmas" and nearly seven years before his next regular solo album, "Lefty". (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

ART GARFUNKEL: "Fate For Breakfast"

Original released on LP Columbia JC 35780

(US 1979, March 15)

"Fate for Breakfast" is the fourth solo studio album by Art Garfunkel released on Columbia Records. It was his first album to miss the U.S. Billboard Top 40 and his first album containing no U.S. Top 40 singles. However, the European release of the album does include a different version of the song "Bright Eyes", which was featured in the film version of the novel "Watership Down", and reached the number-one spot in the United Kingdom, and became the biggest selling single of 1979 there. Likewise, the album itself garnered international success, reaching the top-ten in some European countries. The album was issued in six different sleeves, each with a different shot of Art Garfunkel at the breakfast table. (in Wikipedia)