It can be interesting and, frankly, uncomfortable watching our favorite artists grapple with their advancing years. Madonna, for instance, is only a few years younger than my Mom, and well, those purple panty pictures in the booklet of her latest album are alarming in both the apparent brazen-ness of their self-exploitation, and also in their desperation to convey the total unstoppability, the hunger, and the visual (not to mention sexual) daring of her 1984 self. The music is still fun, but the underlying (and I'm guessing unintentional) message makes me squirmy. Madonna is getting old. Moreover: so am I. (The good news: the advancement of my career is not dependent on my willingness to pose for butt shots in a purple unitard.)
Paul Simon dealt with his age more explicitly (and intentionally) on his last solo album, 2000's You're the One, writing songs about bickering couples growing old together, and releasing the self-defeatingly unglamorous "Old" as the album's lead single. The sound was still good ol' Paul Simon, but ol' was the operative term lyrically. His latest album, Surprise, is no less concerned with age, although, as with Madonna's latest, its most immediate concern seems to be in sounding younger and more with it and relevant and edgy than Simon has sounded in the 20 years since he dropped Graceland.
Lyrically, Simon seems to be reacting (and isn't everybody these days?) to New York City, post-9/11, the apparent incompetence of the Bush Administration, and (of course) his own mortality - writing songs of grandeur and (non-denominational) gospel ("Wartime Prayers"), along with gentle meditations and philosophical explorations of love, family and fatherhood. But, far from the folksier sound of You're the One or the musicological exercises of Graceland, the self-consciously 64-year-old singer-songwriter has self-consciously tapped the 50-something producer Brian Eno (credited here with "sonic landscapes") to update his sound - and the result is a sometimes painfully self-conscious attempt to create his very own U2 album - something that evokes both the anthemic uplift of All That You Can't Leave Behind and the strident theatrics of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, while trying to sound like the career pinnacle it so clearly wants to be (and, to an extent, is already acknowledged to be).
Opening with a 60s-style social-comment-type folksong dressed up as a fabulous chunk of solid arena rock ("How Can You Live in the Northeast"), Surprise is as beautiful as it is frustrating, and for every moment of sublime beauty - like the start-stop of the vintage '96 drum-n-bass beat that unsettles the gorgeous, otherwise acoustic meditations of "Everything About It is a Love Song", giving each of the song's summery reminiscences and musings a sparkling nervous energy, a willful sense of uncertainty - there's another song, like "That's Me" or "Sure Don't Feel Like Love" where the honking electronic production seems more a distraction or a gimmick.
The lead single "Outrageous" is impressive in just how detestably full of itself it is at the start, and how endearing and lovable it finally ends up being. Simon shamelessly confirms his crotchety old man status in a feisty opening verse about people cashing in on the misery of the poor, etc., etc., etc., but just when you think it's just another liberal rant (and a pretty bad one, considering Simon's lyrical prowess), his concerns switch from the (generically) socio-political to the personal, bemoaning the indignities of being a sextagenarian celebrity (ie. hair dye and a lot of sit-ups - but, thankfully, no purple unitard) finally arriving at a nagging question. "Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone?", he asks repeatedly, and it's kind of a joke, but at the same time, he's being serious. The point being, perhaps, that you can rant and rave about how bad things are in the world as loudly (and generically) and as often as you want, but what really matters is finding someone to care about, and finding something to have faith in. Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone? "God will, just like he waters the flowers on your window sill." It's a perfect moment of reassurance; and, for a guy like Paul Simon, an extraordinarily modest one at that.
Still, as genuine as the album feels in its quietest moments - the gorgeous "Another Galaxy", for instance - there are times when the album feels like the handwringing of a wealthy, social liberal artiste. It may just be my background as a foster parent, but "Beautiful", which follows a couple as they build a family by adopting babies from third-world countries, has a vague air of self-congratulation and even commercial acquisition ("we brought a brand new baby home from Kosovo") that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
But while I certainly have reservations about the album, it is nevertheless easily the most consistently listenable work Simon has produced since Graceland, and proves, after the disappointments of his failed Broadway musical (The Capeman) and the stale-on-arrival You're the One album, that I, at least, will still need Paul Simon, and in my own small ($14.99) way, will still feed him too, now that he's 64.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Surprise" by Paul Simon
Warner Bros. Records
Released 5/9/06
Produced by Paul Simon
45 min.
SONGS: How Can You Live in the Northeast - Everything About It Is a Love Song - Outrageous - Sure Don't Feel Like Love - Wartime Prayers - Beautiful - I Don't Believe - Another Galaxy - Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean - That's Me - Father and Daughter
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