First thoughts on Paul Simon’s ‘Stranger to Stranger’

So much to take in from this new album. Easily one of his best. As great as Paul Simon has been, has he ever operated on this level? Familiar sound, brand new territory. It grabs the heart and mind like a complex novella.

Side note: I had a brief disagreement with a friend of mine years ago. I loved “Rhythm of the Saints” when I was younger, though I also appreciated “Graceland.” He was a bit confused when I told him I thought “Rhythm” was the better album, maybe Simon’s best.

But “Graceland” was the cultural touchstone, he argued.

Agreed. But, “Rhythm” hit me on another level. And years later, when my sons were young, I loved singing “Obvious Child,” “Born at the Right Time” and “Spirit Voices” to them. I’m not sure whether they got as much out of my performance as I did, but maybe.

So here’s the thing: After Simon’s 2011 album “So Beautiful or So What” and now “Stranger to Stranger” (officially to be released Friday but streaming in advance on NPR), I’m starting to second guess my own judgment.

“Graceland” and “Rhythm of the Saints”? The new albums are, in their own way, better. That’s because they do more, lyrically in particular.

Those older albums are revered because they always worked on at least two levels, usually one level involving a beautifully told story and the other being a deeper commentary about how we live today.

But “So Beautiful” and “Stranger to Stranger” seem to be working on three or four (or more?) levels, often all at once.

As one example from the previous album: “Love Is Eternal Sacred Light.”

That’s not the most rock ’n’ roll title for a song. But listen closely and suddenly Simon throws a few lyrical punches at you when you didn’t expect it. In a song that starts off seeming to be a simple pairing of good and evil, he builds this narrative…

How’d it all begin? Started with a bang. Couple of light years later stars and planets sang […]

Earth becomes a farm, farmer takes a wife. Wife becomes a river and the giver of life.

Man becomes machine, oil runs down his face. Machine becomes a man with a bomb in the marketplace.

Bang.

The song changes several more times, at one point with Simon singing in the joking voice of God and eventually ending on the “roads of the icy Midwest.”

There are many more examples of songs like that on the “So Beautiful” album and even more on “Stranger to Stranger,” which seems loosely structured as a series of vignettes illustrating different facets of its title theme — how we interact in our daily lives with people we don’t know.

At one point, that interaction is a community rallying around a fallen soldier’s family. At another point, it’s a conversation with a homeless poet. Or there’s the point where Paul Simon has an argument with a nightclub bouncer who won’t let him back into to a club where he’s performing after he gets locked out.

It’s an impossible song to listen to without wanting to get up and shake your hips and clap your hands. And don’t hold back the laughter either, when Simon says in disbelief, “Wristband?! I don’t need a wristband! My axe is on the bandstand. My BAND is on the floor.”

No use. He can’t get in the door because this stranger is blocking his way.

But then Simon takes a 90-degree turn to pull off another lyrical sleight of hand. Suddenly, the song is a metaphorical social commentary about the poor and disenfranchised. And then it simply fades out, and you’re left thinking, “Wait, did he really just do that?”

Several of the songs are like that. He sets up a scenario, gets you hooked and then shifts gears in a way that makes you think twice about what you first thought of the characters.

Take the characters in a song like “Werewolf.”

Should we sympathize with the Milwaukee man whose wife killed him with a sushi knife? Or maybe the old folks who need help looting because “they can’t loot for themselves.” The song appears to be a critique of wealth, more specifically The Wealthy, until Simon sings, “I’m not complaining, just the opposite my friend.”

But that might just be because the world is coming to an end (or just the end of the rainbow). It depends on what you think the werewolf represents: Evil? Fear? Armageddon? Vengeance? Or simply death?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. It’s a full moon and it’s quarter to twelve.

And then there’s “Cool Papa Bell,” quite possibly the most profane, most tattooed, fastest, wall-to-wall-funnest and most baseball-y song Paul Simon has ever written.

I’ve listened to that song four or five times now and still want to listen to it over and over again, so packed with hidden meaning. Or maybe it’s just a fun song about a great baseball player. Or it could be everything at once.

The songs throughout the album are so thoroughly layered. I’d like to think of Simon as piecing this all together so that the linear act of listening becomes a complex riddle to decipher, or like opening the shades in a living room one at a time, sunlight falling on this object and that object until the fuller scene is apparent, transitions in color, light and shadow alternately catching the eye — but ultimately still left to the listener to finish arranging the furniture.