Produced by Paul Simon and Roy Halee, it was released on June 3, 2016 through Concord Records.

[7][8] Simon began writing new material shortly after releasing his twelfth studio album, So Beautiful or So What, in April 2011.

[2] Andy Greene of Rolling Stone dubbed Stranger to Stranger an "experimental album heavy on echo and rhythm that fuses electronic beats with African woodwind instruments, Peruvian drums, a gospel music quartet, horns and synthesizers.

"[2] The album makes use of custom-made instruments, such as the Cloud-Chamber Bowls and the Chromelodeon, which were created by music theorist Harry Partch in the mid-twentieth century.

Simon briefly moved the sessions to Montclair State University, where the instruments are stored, in 2013 in order to employ them on the album.

"The Riverbank" was inspired by a teacher that Simon personally knew who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012.

It also takes root in a visit Simon made to wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital.

The instrumentals "The Clock" and "In the Garden of Edie" function as interludes, designed to give listeners "space."

The two tracks were originally composed for John Patrick Shanley's play Prodigal Son, but went unused.

[14] Randy Lewis from the Los Angeles Times believed the record was "pop music at its most artful and relevant, a sentiment from a septuagenarian representative of rock’s old guard that's arguably as potent as anything from seemingly more streetwise artists one-third his age".

[1] The Independent's Andy Gill hailed it as Simon's "best in several years",[16] and Steve Smith of The Boston Globe considered it his "richest, most instantly appealing collection since Graceland (1986)".

[23] Dan Weiss was somewhat less impressed in Spin, lamenting the music's "novelty electronics", which he said "make everything feel sillier than it is (not inherently a bad thing), but they also fail to get into a groove (which is)".