Brave new world

come from no place you can easily name. Actually, for Stranger To Stranger Simon did pack a few trinkets and experiences from past journeys – to Peru, South Africa, New Orleans, and more – but some of its most defining sounds come not from a culture but from an invention. Stranger… makes clever use of contraptions created by 20th century American musical theorist Harry Partch, including a Chromelodeon and Cloud-Chamber Bowls. Both employ microtonal scales, which split octaves into far more parts, letting the notes hit the ear from fresh angles. If nothing else, it’s a good way for Simon to avoid those old accusations of cultural appropriation once and for all. Simon’s new music sounds inventive, surprising and catchy to boot. As has been his bent for some time, it’s overwhelmingly focused on rhythm. It’s the great irony of Simon’s career that one of the finest melodists of the last halfcentury has largely forsaken that interest to concentrate on the musicality of the beat. Luckily, the ones here find just the right balance of complexity and pleasure. Throughout Stranger…, Simon uses the sound of clapping hands to draw on the primal resonance of slapping flesh. He surrounds it with a wealth of textures and rhythms, from the quaver of a one-stringed Indian gopichand to the Peruvian percussion device the cajón, to guitars from Africa and horns shaped by American jazz. With so much sound in play, the role of producer Roy Halee can’t be underestimated. Now 81, Halee has worked with Simon since the Garfunkel days. Here, he gives each instrument great clarity, no small feat amid such an encompassing soundscape. Simon also got help from Italian electro-dance artist Clap! Clap!, who created beats for three songs. His work on Wristband helps give Simon his best shot at a hit since You Can Call Me Al. The lyrics to Wristband, like many here, cast a wry eye on the idiocy of human hierarchies. Though few acknowledge it, over his last few albums Simon has arisen as a true wit. “Most obits are mixed reviews,” he dryly writes in The Werewolf, a song whose lyrics find the angel of death hovering in every shadow. Throughout the album, mortality taunts and calms the narrator, acting as both jester and sage. Sound itself plays a key character on the LP, heard in guises from the sinister art-rock hook in Proof Of Love to the floating bells of Insomniac’s Lullaby. Sounds beckon and float. While drawn from the real world, they also suggest one that no one before Simon has ever let us hear.

Aged 75, Paul Simon releases one of his most ground-breaking albums. Jim Farber applauds.