Release Date: April 12, 2011
To get the cat out of the bag and spill the beans right out of the clichéd gate: The new Paul Simon album sounds like what most people would expect the new Paul Simon album to sound like. He’s not trying to be someone he’s not, and to be frank, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, to engage yet another tired cliché. God only knows the record-buying public has suffered enough tired rocker reinventions, from Pat Boone’s attempt to be a heavy metal also-ran to Paul McCartney’s Fireman escapades, to whatever Neil Young’s latest experimental project is that isn’t Harvest. In short, this is the Paul Simon from Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer,” One-Trick Pony, and Graceland.
His mellow tenor conveys his brilliant lyrics across 10 cuts that are substantial yet never bogged down in too much contemplation, despite the weighty subject matter. Simon tackles topics like love and loss, marriage and regret, and how he imagines “The Afterlife (“You got to fill out a form first, then you wait in the line,” he sings with a reggae-like lilt) with songs backed by his shimmering acoustic guitar and tasteful instrumentation that always fits the piece. Whether it’s the auto-harp accents in “Questions for the Angels,” some subtle cowbell clangs, the intricate, rolling guitar interplay of “Rewrite” and its playful whistling or the flute and strings in the background of “Love and Hard Times.”
Throughout, the record is dominated by Simon’s knack for bringing slide guitar blues to propel his clever (but never precious) narratives of midlife crises and ponderings of mortality. So Beautiful or So What starts in media res with an invigorating slide guitar bit and adds layers as if he’s adding dishes to the table of the family feast on “Getting Ready For Christmas Day.”
The off kilter “grooving with a pict” Popeye-like word jazz scat punctuates the smooth lushness of the origin of love (and marriage) tale on “Dazzling Blue.” Simon sings: “I loved her the first time I saw her/I know that’s an old songwriting cliché/Loved you the first time I saw you/Can’t describe it any other way” and yet later in the same song, “clouds of antelope” roll by, with swelling orchestration beneath it.
On “Rewrite” he imagines playfully what it would be like if only he could rewrite his (or his character’s) life, in case suggesting he would substitute the scene where the father walks out on his family for a car chase or something that would be more cinematically engaging. Here he uses the dynamics of the multiple voices and threads within his band to convey the internal conversation that takes place.
The instrumental “Amulet” takes a few minutes between songs for Simon to wax poetic on his acoustic guitar, and serves as a meditative introduction to his lovely “Questions for the Angels.”
Notwithstanding the inventive and intricate instrumentation throughout, Simon’s lyrics are his greatest strength, exhibiting his cynical but never sarcastic approach to life, and name-checking everything from Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lu-La” to Jay-Z. He adheres to the philosophy of furniture espoused by poet Maxine Kumin and her objectivist predecessors like William Carlos Williams, so the homeless wake up and remove their cardboard blankets, he lives on Weed Street across from a vacant lot, and he wonders if humans ceased to exist, would the zebras notice? He’s earned the right to engage in the occasional songwriting cliché by this point for sure, with his word paintings such a rewarding mixture of the real and surreal.
Simon concludes the running order by bookending the record with another pulsing blues riff that serves as the foundation for his declaration that: “You know that life is what we make of it, so beautiful, so what?” In the end, it fades away, as if to say: “What have we learned here?” So what? aul Simon has crafted an understated modern masterpiece in his own unassuming way, and the album gets richer and deeper with each listen.
Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What Tracklist:
- “Getting Ready For Christmas Day”
- “The Afterlife”
- “Dazzling Blue”
- “Rewrite”
- “Love And Hard Times”
- “Love Is Eternal Sacred Light”
- “Amulet”
- “Questions For The Angels”
- “Love And Blessings”
- “So Beautiful or So What”
