Try as he might, Art Garfunkel had trouble emerging from ex-partner Paul Simon’s shadow as his solo career progressed. Scissors Cut finds him recording material by a host of famous and lesser-known tunesmiths; predictably, the results are uneven. On the plus side, Garfunkel rekindles his old ethereal magic on Gallagher and Lyle’s atmospheric “A Heart in New York” and rises to near-operatic heights on Clifford T. Ward’s aching “Up in the World.” His crystalline tenor brings out the tenderness in Jules Shear’s “So Easy to Begin” and the whimsy in Mike Batt’s “Bright Eyes” (a tune from the Watership Down film soundtrack that became a chart-topping British hit). Producer Roy Halee (the studio wizard behind Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends and Bridge Over Trouble Water) brings an expansive, resonant sound to the tracks, framing Garfunkel in gilt-edged arrangements.