Carly Simon‘s Comes in Waves lands on 14 August, her first album of original material since 2008’s This Kind of Love and a record that carries, among its many layers, one of the late John Forté’s last recorded appearances.
The gap since that 2008 album has not been total silence. A 2009 record, Never Been Gone, collected acoustic reworkings of Simon’s own catalogue, and there have been live performances and guest spots scattered across the years. But a proper collection of new songs is a different thing entirely, and Carly Simon Comes in Waves is exactly that: twelve original tracks, co-written and produced with David Spencer, and stacked with collaborators old and new.
A Final Appearance from John Forté
The involvement of John Forté gives the album a particular weight. According to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, Forté died suddenly in January at his home in Chilmark, the result of a fatal combination of influenza and a seizure condition. His appearance on Comes in Waves is among his last recorded work.
Simon and Forté had a long personal history. She was a close friend and was instrumental in his early release from prison in 2008. That context hangs quietly over whatever contribution he made to the record, turning his guest spot into something more than a cameo. It is the kind of thing that does not need explaining once you know it.
Simon’s children Ben and Sally Taylor feature on the album alongside longtime collaborators Paul Samwell-Smith and Frank Filipetti, giving Carly Simon Comes in Waves the feel of a record made among people she trusts, not a commercial reset engineered for a new audience.
Lead Single ‘Howl’ and What It’s About
The album’s first single is ‘Howl’, and Simon has been direct about the emotional territory it covers. In a press release, she described it in her own words: ‘Howl lives in that space between betrayal and forgiveness, where anger has to be voiced before it can be released. It’s about letting the frustration out so it doesn’t sit and simmer. The song begins in anger, but it moves toward forgiveness, and speaks to any situation where trust has been broken.’
That is a sharper frame than the vague ‘personal journey’ language that tends to surround comeback records. Simon is naming the emotional mechanics precisely, which suggests the album has a similar directness to it.
The full tracklist runs to twelve songs. In order: ‘Howl’, ‘Maybe I Never Loved You’, ‘Peaches’, ‘Love Has No Ending’, ‘Mother of Pearl’, ‘Slowly’, ‘Four in the Morning’, ‘The More I Look for You’, ‘Love the Way I Do’, ‘The Father Daughter Dance’, ‘Share the End’, and ‘Do It Anyway’. There is enough range in those titles to suggest the record is not a single-mood record. ‘The Father Daughter Dance’ and ‘Share the End’ both land in territory that sounds closer to something personal and reflective, while ‘Peaches’ and ‘Do It Anyway’ hint at something lighter, or at least less weighted.
Spencer’s role as co-writer and producer throughout gives the album a coherence that albums assembled from multiple rooms and sessions sometimes lack. Whether that translates into something that sounds unified rather than polished is the question 14 August will answer.
For now, the single is out and the record has a confirmed release date. After seventeen years without a collection of new material, Carly Simon Comes in Waves is the kind of return that does not arrive with a manufactured narrative around it. The circumstances, particularly Forté’s death earlier this year, have already given it a significance that no press campaign needed to construct.
