I’ve written several times that I consider Paul Simon’s most recent album, last year’s So Beautiful Or So What, one of his best ever — an equal of The Rhythm of the Saints and withing shouting distance of Graceland.

That’s certainly high praise, the sort of thing that is sometimes said during the blush of excitement that accompanies a new album release. Months later you’ll return to the same record and enjoy it but not to the degree you’d advertised.

With this album, however, that hasn’t been the case.

Far from diminishing over time, So Beautiful Or So What is a grower. It sounds even more confident, mature and emotional now than when I first heard it.

When I write these Random Weekend posts, my practice is to turn on the shuffle feature in iTunes, close my eyes and hit the ‘next’ button. I want to hear the song before I see what it is. That moment of anticipation is always exciting, in a geeky sort of way.

The opening percussion of ‘Dazzling Blue’ brought a smile to my face. Paul Simon, certainly since Graceland, has such a way of painting a musical picture with percussion and the human voice. In this case, it’s the low-key scat singing over those first several bars leading up to his signature guitar sound. This song, like every song on the album, is a simply a work of art.

I believe this is the only song in my music collection that contains the word “Montauk,” which makes it a nice random selection for the blog. Recently I was excited to see that Rufus Wainwright has a song titled ‘Montauk’ on his upcoming album, so there’s something to look forward to (for me, anyway).