Paul Simon—Surprise

Josh Hurst

Ever watch the improv comedy show Whose Line is it Anyway? It’s a great, often outrageously funny half-hour program (now sadly defunct) in which four quick-witted comedians would ham it up in a series of sketches and games selected by host Drew Carey, making up all the material as they went along. One of the most popular games on that show was a bit called Newsflash, in which one man would play the role of a TV reporter investigating a breaking story. The trick was, our intrepid journalist never knew what the story actually was—he acted the whole bit in front of a green screen, meaning that the audience could see his environment but he himself was clueless, and half the fun was seeing what strange footage would be projected on the screen behind him.

On Surprise, veteran folkie Paul Simon does his thing with all the skill and professionalism of a great improv comedian, but, like the fictitious newsman on Whose Line, he’s doing it all in front of a green screen. But it isn’t Drew Carey projecting images behind him; rather, it’s avant-pop trailblazer and U2 producer Brian Eno, an eccentric sonic wizard who applies all manner of frothy mad science to Simon’s bare-bones folk-pop, transporting our fearless troubadour to the most unexpected of environments.

Like the Newsflash reporter, Simon is just doing what he does best. He sings in his gentle, everyman voice. He plucks away at an acoustic guitar. He waxes both philosophical and sentimental—often at the same time—and brightens his navel-gazing with sprightly humor and backporch humility. He’s been doing this stuff for decades now; in fact, one might be tempted to accuse him of phoning it in on this album, were it not for the fact that it’s his strongest batch of songs since 1990’s The Rhythm of the Saints.

For his part, Eno creates sonic backdrops that take enough twists and turns to warrant all the Surprise jokes music critics can devise. Working with a backing band that includes jazz legends Herbie Hancock and Bill Frisell, Eno does work here that has less in common with his own ambient recordings than with spacious, trip-hop flavored rock. There are electric guitars, pianos, choral backing vocals, synthesizer flourishes, and pulsing drum loops that sound like they could have been lifted from Top 40 radio. Which is not at all to suggest that Surprise marks a return to the radio-ready, hook-heavy pop of Simon’s youth; though it isn’t nearly as insular as his last album, You’re the One, it does find Simon continuing to eschew traditional song structures in favor of winding, occasionally meandering poems, with more emphasis on words and production details than on big hooks or melodies. Thus, the songs are perfectly suited to Eno’s shifting musical backdrops, which float by like changing weather patterns or clouds in the sky.

Simon’s lyrics are typically earnest, but he’s smart enough not to take himself too seriously. Social commentary can ring a little hollow when it’s coming from the mouth of a wealthy pop music veteran, and Simon says as much in “Outrageous” (“It’s outrageous, a man like me stand here and complain”). Thus, he mostly leaves politics to the

Springsteens and Youngs of the world, choosing instead to sit in front of his green screen and share sundry introspections about his family and his quest for faith and meaning.

The Deity is a key player here, with Simon vowing early on to “sit down, shut up, think about God, and wait for the hour of my rescue” (“Everything About it is a Love Song”). In “Outrageous,” a sly and self-deprecating tirade about aging, Simon poses the question, “Who’s gonna love you when your looks are gone?” It isn’t rhetorical: “God will.” In “I Don’t Believe,” Simon looks for signs of goodness and grace all around him, but isn’t not quite enough to help him get past the evil in the world: “I don’t believe, and I’m not consoled/ I lean closer to the fire, but I’m cold.” Luckily, his navel-gazing doesn’t ever grow tedious; there are enough tender reflections on his beloved family to keep things warm and cheery:

My children are laughing

Not a whisper of care

My wife is brushing

Her long chestnut hair

And, in “Father and Daughter,” an adoring song to his younguns that first appeared on the Wild Thornberries soundtrack:

I’m gonna watch you shine

Gonna watch you grow

Gonna paint a sign

So you’ll always know

As long as one and one is two

There could never be a father

Who loved his daughter

As much as I love you

Okay, so clearly his warm-heartedness can sometimes drift dangerously close to sentimentality; coming at the end of an album as humble and as sincere as this one, however, it feels more like a natural extension of Simon’s poetry than a barf-inducing non-sequiter. The same goes for “Wartime Prayers,” a song that, despite its occasional lapses into clichés and its tacky choral backdrop, stands as the set’s most memorably and inspiring song, a humble petition that transcends polemics or partisanship and speaks directly to the greatest of human needs:

Because you cannot walk with the holy

If you’re just a halfway decent man

I don’t pretend that I’m a mastermind

With a genius marketing plan

I’m trying to tap into some wisdom

Just a little drop will do

I want to rid my heart of envy

And cleanse my soul of rage before I’m through.

That’s not exactly a newsflash, but Lord knows we need more men like Paul Simon to testify to these truths. There may be a war raging on the green screen behind him—and he knows it—but he’s not going to let that stop him from doing his thing, and doing it well.