I don’t think Paul Simon’s ever made a beautiful album. He’s made plenty of beautiful songs though. And that made for a steady stream of albums that were at-least good. That was until a little over a decade ago when, after the release of Songs From The Capeman; one of his most melodic sets; the quality of his music suddenly declined. He’s been stuck in an artistic rut ever since. This new album, only his third in all that time, is no return to form.

The first song; a Christmas anthem, oddly enough; suggests it might be. It’s better than every song on his last album and most of the songs on the One before it. But So Beautiful Or So What is a wonderless mess from there, all the way to the end; the title song, which is barely good enough. Most of this album; all but the first and last song; is simply a drag. The poetry and storytelling is signature Paul Simon, but the vocal melodies; an element the artist used to master; are boring and bland.

Brian Eno is replaced by the long-awaited return of Phil Ramone as producer, but his work offers little help. What these songs needed were to be scrapped for better songs; “simple” ones, as Paul Simon himself described during a Barnes And Noble interview in 2008. He debuted live demo versions of Love And Hard Times and Questions For The Angels that day; music he described as “complex”; before strumming an experimental groove he described as the result of going back to something “simple”.

That “simple” groove he played was loopy, bouncy and instantly catchy. It didn’t need drums or even vocals to sound marvelous and I hoped he’d make a full song out of it for this album, but it’s nowhere to be found. In its place are songs it takes repeated listens to even grasp the forgettable melodies of. The whiny guitar riffs on Love And Blessings are funky, yes, but it’s not nearly enough. I want a beautiful Paul Simon album, or at-least another good one, before he’s dead and gone.

my rating = 2 of 5

2011