So Beautiful or So What’ may be only due on April 12th, but you can already listen to a second song from Paul Simon’s album. After ‘Getting Ready For Christmas Day’, ‘Afterlife’, is now available on iTunes, or on the Official Paul Simon Facebook Page for streaming: http://www.facebook.com/paulsimon
And there is a funny thing about that Facebook page: when it will hit 110,000 fans, they will share another track from ‘So Beautiful or So What’ within 24 hours. So, everyone should ‘like’ the page!
There’s no doubt that the song is echoing the atmosphere of ‘The Rhythm of the Saints’ and the African guitars of ‘Graceland’, but it never explodes louder than a subtle murmur, so it may be a little closer to his early solo material than I previously thought.
The song, which tells a story of a meeting with God after death, on a rather upbeat mood, is not really his knockin’ on heaven’s door though, but rather a humorous ironic narrative about the afterlife where we will still have to fill out forms and wait in line ….This afterlife seems way too close close from this mortal one, but old time rock and roll has always the last word, Gene Vincent’s immortal ‘Be Bop A Lu La’.
Talking about Elvis, Elvis Costello has written the liner notes for the album, it’s very eulogistic and you can read the whole thing on the Huffington post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elvis-costello/on-paul-simons-so-beautif_b_829716.html)