Paul Simon: Surprise

Sean Piccoli

It has to be a pain to go through life as the voice of your generation, but Paul Simon has borne that label with humor and grace. The latest evidence is his first new release in six years, Surprise.

The elfin Wunderkind who shot to stardom alongside Art Garfunkel is now 64. Where his early songs reflected the clamor of the 1960s, and his 1986 masterpiece Graceland moved beyond youthful self-absorption, Surprise brings tuneful insight to old age and the shadow of death.

It's not a depressing album; Simon is as witty and buoyant, and as full of glorious melodies, as ever. His fluid, light, intimate tenor shrugs off the years. And he is still an explorer, reaching into African and Latin rhythms, gospel, jazz, doo-wop and hip-hop. For Surprise, he teamed with ambient-music pioneer Brian Eno, who is credited not for producing but for "sonic environment" -- such as the deeply percussive coda to Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean, where a moment of nostalgia is trailed by the faint sound of a church organ heard at impossible distance.

There are songs about the young on Surprise, filled with tender hope. Another Galaxy is the story of a bride who runs away from her wedding, "leaving all the yellow roses." The tune's norteño-tinged guitar is mournful, but the rhythms underneath drive the story forward. Father and Daughter, the Oscar-nominated song Simon wrote for The Wild Thornberrys, is an utterly sweet lullaby to a beloved child, bouncing on a sunny Caribbean beat.

But most of the characters in Simon's songs are at the other end of life, all too aware that, as one of them sings, "Forgotten is a long, long time." Outrageous is a wry old guy's rap, a percussive recitation of all the stuff that drives him crazy, everything from robber barons to public school food. "Anybody care what I say?" he barks, then answers himself sharply: "No." Its wistful chorus is every Baby Boomer's question: "Who's gonna love ya when your looks are gone?"

The somber, lovely Wartime Prayers is not a soldier's plea but the meditation of a man distant from the conflict, yet unable to think of anything else. He doesn't welcome the emotions the war awakens: "I want to rid my heart of envy and cleanse my soul of rage before I'm through." But he's haunted by the image of a mother kissing her sleeping babies "to drive away despair/she says a wartime prayer."

Connection to family, to the past, to the larger world, to the universe is the force that holds life together in these songs, and beyond. For most of Simon's speakers, the closer they come to leaving the world, the more beautiful it becomes.