Paul Simon, “So Beautiful or So What” (Hear Music)
It’s been 20 years since Paul Simon, now 69, made an album of note. That would be 1990’s “Rhythm of the Saints, the Brazilian-flavored follow-up to 1986’s South-African-rooted “Graceland.” With “So Beautiful or So What,” Simon gets his groove back by returning to the template of those two discs, melding his singer-songwriter observations with percolating rhythms delicately and deftly employed. Mortality is on his mind, most effectively on “The Afterlife,” which imagines the way into heaven as a bureaucratic process akin to waiting in line at the DMV.
Simon occasionally hits a strained, awkward note. A reference to Jay-Z is out of place, and “Rewrite” is hackneyed. But he mostly keeps his big-idea discussions digestible by staying away from heavy-handed pronouncements and keeping the syncopated rhythms supple and inviting. Sequencing complaint: “Getting Ready for Christmas Day” is a superb seasonal song that samples the Rev. J.M. Gates and brings the Iraq war and economic hardship into the holiday equation. But it’s still a Christmas song, so it shouldn’t be the first track on an album that comes out in April.
Toro Y Moi, “Underneath the Pine” (Carpark)
Toro Y Moi is the one-, not two-man, band consisting of the excellently named South Carolinian Chazwick Bundick and his abundance of swirling, psychedelic, low-key disco production ideas.
Along with similarly electro-ambient soundscapists like Neon Indian, Bundick became a minor chillwave sensation with last year’s sample-heavy “Causers of This.” “Underneath the Pine” is a more organic effort that weaves its for- fans-of-Brian-Eno-and-Animal Collective spell with live instrumentation often played by the abundantly talented Bundick, who also is growing ever more impressive as a songwriter and singer.
Dan DeLuca, Philadephia Inquirer
