Paul Simon Announces First New Album In Seven Years

Paul Simon has revealed that he will release his first new album of original material since 2016’s Stranger To Stranger, and his first since putting out a collection of re-recorded songs, In The Blue Light, in 2018.

Seven Psalms will be released on Friday, 19 May, Rolling Stone reports, after Simon says he was visited by King David’s Psalms in a dream back in 2019.

The fifteenth album from Simon was created in the lonely hours - between 3:30 and 5 am, he revealed in a press release. Vocal ensemble Voces8, singer Edie Brickell, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, chamber musicians, and many others feature on Seven Psalms, a 33-minute, seven-movement piece meant to be intentionally listened to as a complete product.

“I’m trying all the time to move things in this kind of flow way that puts you in a dream,” Simon said in a trailer that accompanies this announcement. 

He added, “And I think if you’re willing to fall into a dream space, you’re willing to let your judgment down.”

Seven Psalms will arrive with a companion documentary entitled In Restless Dreams, directed by Alex Gibney. Variety notes that Simon described the album as follows: “On January 15th, 2019, I had a dream that said ‘You are working on a piece called Seven Psalms.

"The dream was so strong that I got up and I wrote it. But I had no idea what that meant. Gradually information would come. I would start to wake up two or three times a week between 3:30 and 5 in the morning, and words would come, I’d write ’em down, then start to put it together.”

He continued, This is a journey for me to complete. This whole piece is really an argument I’m having with myself about belief or not.”

You can pre-order or pre-save Seven Psalms here.

Seven Psalms tracklist:

1. The Lord
2. Love Is Like A Braid
3. My Professional Opinion
4. Your Forgiveness
5. Trail Of Volcanoes
6. The Sacred Harp
7. Wait