Stranger to Stranger (Deluxe Edition)

Simon’s quiet, late-career surge continues. Produced by Andy Smith and Roy Halee— the latter a collaborator of Simon’s since his days with Garfunkel—Stranger is a slyly experimental album filled with small sonic surprises, from the warped gospel sample of “Street Angel” to the jazzy “Wristband,” whose bass mimics the mercurial glide of West African talking drums. Lyrically, Simon remains sharp, too, with a light touch and gimlet eye. “Milwaukee man, led a fairly decent life, made a fairly decent living, had a fairly decent wife,” he mutters on “The Werewolf.” “She killed him—uh, sushi knife/now they’re shopping for a fairly decent afterlife.”