TORONTO - Listeners of Paul Simon's latest record, "So Beautiful or So What," might come away thinking that the 69-year-old has grown obsessed with issues of mortality and death.
Lyrics about God and religion abound, there's a sardonic ditty about heavenly bureaucracy called "The Afterlife" as well as other more serious ruminations on songs including "Questions for the Angels" and "Love and Hard Times."
But Simon insists he isn't preoccupied with death. Well, not really.
"Not anymore than anybody who is my age," the affable Simon said in a recent telephone interview. "It's not an obsession. It's just something that's in there. It puts things in an interesting perspective, anyway."
"There are a lot of different ways of thinking about life in a big picture. And that's really, I think, quite natural to my generation at this point. I don't think that it dominates the record. I wouldn't want it to dominate the record. It's just sort of a natural process at this point.
"But I have a lot of other things that I'm at least as equally interested in, maybe more."
Mortality might be on Simon's mind on this day more than usual, simply because he's enduring a nasty virus.
In Toronto for a pair of shows, Simon visited a local doctor and decided to soldier ahead.
"I don't have to go on the DL -- I'll be playing hurt, but I'll play," he says with a chuckle.
Of course, despite the ailment, Simon has reason to celebrate.
"So Beautiful or So What" opened at No. 4 on the Billboard charts -- his highest placement since 1986's smash "Graceland" opened in the third slot.
That's fitting, in a way, because Simon -- who called the commercial success "very gratifying" -- returned to a writing style he hadn't employed since that milestone record.
Instead of starting with the drums and working from there, Simon wrote many of these songs in a manner more traditional for singer/songwriters: alone, with an acoustic guitar.
"That was a conscious decision to start with sitting with a guitar just by myself and writing ballads with interesting changes, as opposed to starting with drums or a rhythmic premise and writing over the groove," he explained.
"It started the record in a different place than I have been starting ever since 'The Rhythm of the Saints,' so it was a long time.
"And it's always good to shift and break your pattern. I was long overdue to break that pattern."
And yet while the record stands as a departure from 2006's Brian Eno collaboration "Surprise," it's unlikely to alienate many of Simon's fans. In fact, he hopes it might persuade some new ones (this is part of the strategy behind Simon mixing general-admission rock clubs into his tour alongside more traditional soft-seat venues).
As usual, Simon infuses his compositions with an international flair -- sounds from Africa and India buoy "The Afterlife" and the sprightly "Dazzling Blue" respectively -- while imbuing his other tunes with a range of production flourishes that sometimes only reveal themselves upon multiple listens.
For instance, stomping opener "Getting Ready for Christmas Day" features a sample from a sermon given by Atlanta's Rev. J.M. Gates in 1941 that actually inspired much of the rest of the song, a tale of working-class struggle.
Simon says he uses "trial and error" to find these touches, and points out that most of his explorations wind up being edited out. But he always keeps experimenting.
"It's mostly about not being bored," said Simon, who recorded much of the album at his home in Connecticut, co-producing with Phil Ramone. "If I do something, and I say, 'Ah, I've done that,' I don't want to do it again. If I can't think of some element of that that's worth repeating, even if I really liked what I did, I won't repeat it. Because I'm just not interested enough to do that.
"I'm trying to be interested, so I really want to be involved in the process, and it takes a little while once the thing begins, but then I really do get hooked in. I love it."
There have been periods where the globe-trotting nature of Simon's musical compositions seemed to invite as much scorn as praise, but over the past few years, his solo work -- especially "Graceland" -- has heavily influenced some of rock music's most fashionable bands, particularly the preppy New York outfit Vampire Weekend.
Simon says he does hear those similarities when he listens to the younger bands, and he doesn't mind at all.
"I have an 18-year-old who's a really good musician ... so I get to hear a lot of stuff that he likes. And what I see out of it is that, that world, the indie world, is sort of interested in the same thing that I am, which is finding new sounds and trying to change the construction of songs, moving things around, trying to avoid cliches."
"If what I do is helpful or inspiring, that's very gratifying. And I say to all bands -- including Vampire Weekend when I met them -- take whatever you want. It's not like I invented it. I was just the same as you. I was just looking and looking until I found something I liked. And then you find it and you make of it something that's your own.
"So I feel like anybody's entitled to take any ideas they want from me."
