I’ve reviewed two albums in the past week by artists on the other side of 50, ancient by rock-and-roll standards. One was Lucinda Williams’ Blessed and the other was R.E.M.’s Collapse Into Now. Both represent the best work those performers have released in years.

And now I have the privilege of reviewing the latest release of another elder statesman, Paul Simon, who is less than a year away from his 70th birthday. To mark the occasion, his new album So Beautiful Or So What is receiving some of the best reviews of his career.

I’ve read the phrase “his best since Graceland” many times in reviews of this album. Certainly Simon’s work will always be measured against that landmark achievement, but it’s not as if he went to sleep after its release. Rhythm of the Saints was a gorgeous follow-up, while You’re the One and Surprise were mature, effective releases. Even Songs from The Capeman, maligned because of its association with the Broadway failure, contains several memorable and poignant tracks.

It’s not like Paul Simon was in need of a comeback. And it’s not like we’d hold it against him to quietly slip into retirement following a career as remarkable as his. And perhaps that’s what makes So Beautiful Or So What such an unexpected delight. What a treat to see that not only is Paul Simon still interested in making music, he has more to say than ever. How special to find such meaning in something you didn’t know you needed.

Is this record Simon’s best since Graceland? I don’t know the answer to that question just yet. I will say that it’s easily his best since Rhythm of the Saints. Whether it tops that exotic masterwork remains to be seen. Time will tell.

And time is exactly what Simon has on his mind in So Beautiful Or So What. The passage of time, the confrontation with our mortality, what it means to get older and face the end of our days. This is an album he couldn’t have made 20 years ago, and that alone makes it special.

Certainly Simon has always been an old soul, more focused on endings than beginnings. This is the man whose first words to reach a mass audience were “Hello darkness, my old friend.”

Forty-three years ago, on Bookends, he painted a portrait of two old men sitting on a park bench “waiting for the sunset” and “silently sharing the same fears.” In the bridge of that song (‘Old Friends’), Art Garfunkel softly sings “How terribly strange to be seventy.”

And what’s it like for Simon to look back on those words now? I believe So Beautiful Or So What holds the answer.

Simon’s theme here, spelled out explicitly in the title track, is that life is what you make of it. And in his case, he has made it wonderful through love and through music. Time and again, he sings of the redemptive power of both.

God shows up a lot on this album. Simon jokes on a companion DVD that for a non-practicing Jew he sure writes a lot about Christianity. But the deity he conjures up, sometimes in the first person, is not a loving personal god. He’s a bemused absentee father.

In ‘The Afterlife,’ Simon imagines the Pearly Gates as a heavenly version of the DMV. “You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line,” he quips in one of the album’s most memorable choruses.

And what can we do in the face of an indifferent god? In ‘The Afterlife,’ he finds solace in music:

On centerpiece track ‘Love and Hard Times,’ God and his son visit Earth one Sunday morning then leave abruptly, unimpressed. Simon then shifts to a personal tale of a love affair, presumably his own marriage to Edie Brickell. From the blush of first love through difficult times and forward into some saving grace, he finishes with these lovely words:

It’s one of the most arresting and moving moments in the Paul Simon catalog, and that’s saying something.

That song doesn’t even have a proper chorus, but elsewhere he delivers the hooks. ‘Rewrite’ is a poignant tale of a Vietnam vet who wishes he could take another stab at the story of his life in Hollywood fashion. Melodically it recalls the simple and classic tunes of his “Rhymin’ Simon” days, but a Spanish guitar and staccato bass line take it somewhere new.

Opening track ‘Getting Ready For Christmas Day’ has an accordion rave-up vibe that would fit in on the back half of Graceland, and a surprise up its sleeve: a sampled recording of Reverend J.M. Gates delivering a sermon of the same name. The album is filled with little touches like that one, and they all work.

The title song kicks off with a groovy lick that recalls ‘Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard.’ He jumps from chicken gumbo to a child’s bedtime story to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., wondering why human beings “play a game with time and love like a pair of rolling dice.” We decide every day whether life is “so beautiful or so what.” Much like Lucinda Williams’ latest, this album makes his choice clear.

Incredibly, Simon’s voice hasn’t aged a bit in 45 years. He sounds the same on this album as on the earliest Simon & Garfunkel recordings. I suppose he’s never had all that much range to lose, but his comforting tenor remains one of the most effective sounds in popular music. What better tour guide for a trip to the end of days?

Paul Simon will soon know how terribly strange it is to be 70. Or more likely how strangely wonderful. Seventy these days doesn’t seem as old as it must have when he wrote those lines in the 1960s. One could argue that he’s preoccupied with death on this album, but I’d say it’s just the opposite: he’s occupied by life.

Life is what we make of it… and he has made it beautiful indeed. And I hope he’s right, and at the end we’re left with nothing but the people we love and with the fragment of a song.

Is it Be Bop a Lula or ooh Papa Doo? I might opt for “lie-la-lie” from ‘The Boxer’ or “da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da” from ‘The Only Living Boy in New York.’ Lord knows, you can’t go wrong with a Paul Simon tune.