Description

Review

Surprise, is Paul Simon’s tenth solo album. It is also the first album since 1986’s Graceland, to represent such a radical union of musical style and technique.
Even when considering an artist as prolific and challenging as Paul Simon, who seems to successfully reinvent the wheel with each new distinctive album, a full-fledged collaboration with none other than Brian Eno, was a bit unexpected. But it works. It works very well.

Surprise, may serve as a testament to the artists shared interest in world music and composition, more so it serves the most reflexive tendencies of the pairs astounding musical talents. The music they create, has given them plenty of room to breathe, build and respond to each other. It’s hard to imagine that they could have brought forth an album like this while apart. That said, there is nothing reductive in this musical partnership, Simon and Eno, never step on one another’s toes. There is never an awkward moment or movement across the entire album.

Eno, has been credited on Surprise, as providing “sonic landscapes”, which he does. Simon in turn, responds to these landscapes with some of his most concrete and vivid lyrical notions to date, this combination contributes to the almost organic feel of the album. A quality that is usually more prevalent to jazz music, than folk, pop or rock.

A very real personality has been created and grows forth from these songs. A personality it seems, that is reaching far beyond mere structural innovation, from two of the brightest minds of modern music, while still producing an album this is unmistakably Paul Simon.