So Beautiful or So What (2011)

In the ‘70s I was a dedicated fan of Paul Simon, maybe even more than I ever was of Simon & Garfunkel, who had some songs I liked but not many I loved (mostly on Sounds of Silence). All of Simon’s three solo albums in that decade—Paul Simon, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, and Still Crazy After All These Years—are good. I thought they verged on pop song masterpieces, especially the first. I even liked his 1983 album, Hearts and Bones, but by then he was turning into more of a slightly guilty pleasure. He definitively lost me in 1986, once and for all, with Graceland, which among other things was where I started to notice I was tired of his voice. Fast-forward 25 years to So Beautiful or So What, which reunited him with Rhymin’ and Still Crazy producer Phil Ramone. High production values is very much the name of the game here, as it always has been with Simon. So Beautiful is experimental in many ways, with ubiquitous bells and heavy samples, but it’s always “tasty.” He’s playing with exotic global music as he was on Graceland (and perhaps since?)—West African electric guitar blues, Indian percussion, the samples, and more. The personnel cited on Wikipedia runs to the dozens. So Beautiful seems to me to integrate its elements better than Graceland but it’s still a little too ostentatious to not be troublesome on the cultural appropriation tip. I notice the first song, the Christmas song (“Getting Ready for Christmas Day”), as I appreciate when artists try to create their own Christmas standards. But even that song and all that follows fade too quickly into the background, perhaps victim of the production values. When I remember to listen closely I hear a lot of craft going into it. But it’s not that interesting and rarely keeps my attention for long, not least from being tired of his voice now in the first place. I don’t seem to be able to shake that. Lots of establishment rock critics went for So Beautiful (Robert Christgau, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Jon Pareles), hailing it enthusiastically as Simon’s best in decades. Maybe—I don’t know anything after Graceland and sought this one out perhaps based on these reviews. In many ways Simon’s contributions, his voice and his songs, are simply not necessary. I think it’s cool that he listens widely, but I think we’d all be better off if he did something like David Byrne and put together anthology albums.