Some records arrive; this one surfaces. Comes In Waves, released on the 14th of August through Iris Records, is Carly Simon’s 24th studio album and her first collection of original songs in eighteen years — since 2008’s This Kind of Love. At 83, and six decades on from her solo debut, she built it the unhurried way: largely at her Martha’s Vineyard home, out of melodic fragments and half-finished ideas she’d been quietly hoarding for years. It’s very much a family affair, with son Ben Taylor producing, playing and singing, and daughter Sally lending vocals and painting the cover art. Longtime allies David Spencer and Frank Filipetti share production duties, and — lovely detail, this — Paul Samwell-Smith is back at the desk, more than fifty years after he produced Anticipation. The album also carries the final recorded work of John Forté, who died in January.
The songs themselves are unmistakably hers: conversational, generous, quietly devastating when you’re not braced for it. Lead single “Howl” is the most muscular thing here, a rocker about giving frustration somewhere to go — Simon describes it as living “in that space between betrayal and forgiveness, where anger has to be voiced before it can be released.” Elsewhere the mood softens into memory. “Mother of Pearl” is written for Sally, “The Father-Daughter Dance” reaches back further still, and “Peaches” and “Four in the Morning” catch that particular Simon knack for a line that sounds offhand until it lands. “Share the End” revisits an Anticipation-era song with Samwell-Smith, closing a very long circle. The title comes from “Slowly,” and it’s the right frame for the whole record — love and grief don’t come at you steadily, they come in sets.
There’s context worth knowing. Simon revealed in July that she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and was treated for skin cancer during the same stretch in which this album came together. “In the middle of all this, I began recording a new album,” she said. “That still feels mysterious to me.” You can hear the years in her voice — the reviews have been respectful rather than rapturous, and she doesn’t reach for the notes she once did — but the phrasing, the melodic instinct and the plain honesty are all intact, and arguably sharper for the wear. It’s a late-career record made for the love of making it, which is its own kind of recommendation.
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