What impresses me the most about this album is its use of varied instrumentation. Remember how Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m. was entirely acoustic guitar, except for a banjo on one song? Remember how acoustic guitar remained a huge staple of the other three albums, even putting in a fairly strong appearance on Bookends? We've come a long way. You won't find that strong focus here. Yes, acoustic guitar is on this album, but in much shorter supply than on previous albums. You've got the full piano sound on the title track, but there's also the heavy percussion of "Cecilia," the organ on "Keep The Customer Satisfied," and horns all throughout the album, most notably on "Baby Driver." There's the steel drum and trumpet in "The Boxer," and the woodwinds and strings in "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright (Paul's farewell to Art, the former architecture major; in the background at the end you can hear Roy Halee and Paul calling "So long already, Artie!").

While it's not very typical of their music as a whole, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is wonderful. It's not just my favorite song on this album. It's not just my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song. It's not just my favorite song of the era or the genre. It's my hands-down favorite song of all time. It's hard to come close to this piece of magic Paul conjured up and let Art put into action. If there were nothing else on this album worth listening to, I'd buy it anyway just for this song. Unfettered by the ribbons of applause it's tied in on live albums, this is the way the song was always meant to be heard.

I'd heard "Cecilia" on oldies radio so many times before becoming an S&G fan, but I never realized it was the same group who was singing "The Sound Of Silence" and "Homeward Bound." It's a fun song, fast, with clapping and an interesting rhythm. It gets old fast, but still worth listening to.

Who can forget the never-ending "lie la lie" chorus of "The Boxer"? About five years ago, I was traveling with some friends, and someone found an S&G CD in the van. It was the only thing we could all agree to listen to, and while everyone shouted out that they wanted to hear one song or another, they finally came to a general consensus: everyone wanted to hear "The Boxer." This is one of those songs that has something for everyone. For me, it's the chorus, which somehow seems empowering.

"Bye Bye Love" is the only live track on any of the five albums. Somehow S&G's cover of an Everly Brothers hit seems more sincere than the original, and I really like it. It feels like they mean it more than the Everly Brothers ever did. This song is one of the reasons this album's my favorite.

Notes on the expanded edition bonus tracks:

The early demo of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is so good, I can't believe it wasn't released in an earlier compilation. The entire thing is mostly piano, none of that fancy stuff that's in the latter half of the final version, except for a little bit of drumming further into it. At the beginning, the verses sound lower than on the final version. There's a little bit of playing with the melody throughout the piece, though, and some interesting, different things going on with the piano. Lyrically, it stays the same as the final version until almost halfway through. The lyrics are different at the end of verse two, and the following chorus changes to accomodate. After the second chorus, the drums come in. The melody of the "silver girl" verse is noticeably different from the final version. The lyrics have changed there as well, and so has the final chorus. All in all, this is nice. I like seeing evidence of the development from this early version (August 1969) to the recorded version (November 1969), and I find that I like them just about equally well, and maybe even this one a little bit more.

Overall, 4 out of 5 stars. There's some really nice stuff on here, but then there are some pieces that I don't understand or just plain don't like. I love the sounds and I love some of the songs, but I only like the album.