By Aaron Calvin

Paul Simon seems to be inviting a clear-cut judgment in the very title of his new album. Is the aging pop-folk artists newest effort So Beautiful or is it So What? The answer lies somewhere in between these two extremes.

 The album opens with “Getting Ready for Christmas Day.” Christmas songs are all well and good, but including one on a non-holiday themed collection seems like a strange move, especially starting an album with one. But perhaps Simon has earned this. After his long tenure in the world of popular music, perhaps he can throw in a little Christmas music at the beginning of his record, simply because he wants one there.

After this odd introduction, Simon ambles on with one song after another, shifting genres as he goes along. Some of them are higher energy, like “The Afterlife” or “Love is Eternal Sacred Light.” Some are quiet and more stripped down than anything he’s done since the Simon and Garfunkel days (he even references “Homeward Bound” in “Questions for Angels”). He also incorporates some of the world sound that he’s been experimenting with for the past twenty years or so.

All of this genre shifting makes for an interesting album musically, and, at the brisk pace of 38 minutes, the listener doesn’t get too bored. However, there is a pervasive feeling throughout the album that Simon’s songwriting has become simply uninspired.  Lyrically, Simon writes sloppily at his best, condescendingly at his worst. The album is filled with vague reflections on the generalities of love and life, sentimentality one comes to expect from artists of a certain age.

Simon, as well as other critics, has claimed that So Beautiful or So What is the artist’s best album since Graceland in 1986. This very well could be the case, but it doesn’t say much towards the quality of this album. While the comparisons are easy to draw, So Beautiful is missing the qualities that made Graceland such a well-crafted album. There is in none of the helpless sadness of the song “Graceland.” There is none of the lyrical and musical charm of “You Can Call Me Al.”

So Beautiful or So What is a decent work from an older musician working in the twilight of his career and would make a good addition to die hard Paul Simon fan’s anthology. But for the casual listener, the album passes by in a fairly unremarkable way.