SOME ENCHANTED EVENING - ART GARFUNKEL
This beautiful record may be the best of the new century’s glut of second-generation visits to the Great American Songbook. Here, Garfunkel embraces 13 standards that are right up the 65-year-old singer’s Tin Pan Alley. A few songs (”I Remember You,” “You Stepped Out of a Dream” and “Quiet Night of Quiet Stars”) have a delicate yet bracing samba lilt, and “I’m Glad There Is You” would fit Johnny Mathis like a velvet glove. Producer Richard Perry very gently changes the muted pastel shades from track to track, deploying impeccably tasteful short solos from trumpet, sax and harmonica. When a song might be inherently sentimental (”Someone to Watch Over Me”), Garfunkel eases off with a little Chet Baker-style cool. Adding a playful doo-wop riff to “Let’s Fall in Love,” Garfunkel seems to be saying, “it’s all music,” and in this case, quite wonderful music. Billboard
