Paul Simon - Stranger To Stranger (Vinyl)

"The Werewolf" opens Stranger to Stranger, Paul Simon's thirteenth solo studio album, with a heavy rhythmic thud -- bass, drums, and maracas lumbering along in a modified Bo Diddley beat not a far cry from the Who's "Slip Kid." Simon isn't looking to the past, though: he's writing toward an inevitable sunset, mindful of mortality -- just like he was on 2011's So Beautiful or So What -- but he's firmly grounded in a tumultuous present, embracing all the cut-and-paste contradictions endemic to the digital age. With the exception of a pair of hushed acoustic numbers and the expansive title track, all positioned to provide necessary pressure relief from the density of the rest of the record, Stranger to Stranger feels built from the rhythm up, a tactic familiar to Simon since 1986's Graceland. Unlike the easy gait of Graceland, the words here are clipped and rushed, sliding in with the bustle of the rhythm. It's not that the songs aren't melodic -- hooks arrive in snatches, sometimes formi