A number of Paul Simon's musical contemporaries appear to be phoning it in these days, and we could indeed name a few names. Instead of phoning it in, 74-year old Paul Simon phones a few important people and ends up making an exhilarating album in the process.
So he phones people like the revered young American composer Nick Muehly, who plays celeste and orchestra bells and arranges a horn section. He calls Irish Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, who is thanked in the credits.
He calls up the legendary jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette for one number, and calls Roy Halee, his producer from Simon and Garfunkel days, now in his eighties. He checks out a range of weird and wonderful instruments and he lays down beautiful songs like Proof of Love and the soothing, wistful title track, Stranger to Stranger.
The exotic range of instrumentation, the skillful orchestration of eclectic sounds, the vibrancy of the African-accented beats - all make for an album that should hold your attention literally for days as you lap up its musical excellence. Moreover, the listener will feel somehow that he or she is not cracking its secrets until the record has been played many times.
Some of the lesser-spotted instruments featuring were patented by the late avant-garde composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) whose image adorns two pages of the liner notes. Aside from Simon himself on glockenspiel, harmonium and the African mbira, there are – wait for it - a chromelodeon, a gopichand, a Trompa Doo and a Big Boing mbira.
There is wonderful tuba and wonderful use of brass in general and he even has flamenco dancing on a couple of tracks, to add to the great frisson of percussive effects. So what we get is a fresh-sounding work with rhythms and counter-rhythms working in an African groove. It's not quite Graceland but it's in the same veldt.
Opening track The Werewolf sees Simon playing prophet of doom, casting a snide eye on ugly greed, as he does in the second offering, Wristband, which begins with a musician getting locked out of his own gig and ends by making a stark point a world gone mad on consumer pressure: Kids that can’t afford the cool brand/Whose anger is a shorthand/ For you’ll never get a wristband.
Hats off to Simon for intelligence and musical daring on Stranger to Stranger which was four years in the making. Four years of painstaking work on lyrics and music, in the company of some great musicians, and the labour of a master whose patience and tenacity has been amply rewarded here.
Paddy Kehoe
