Paul Simon’s Triumphant Comeback Tour Hits Disney Corridor: Live performance Evaluation

Right here comes rhymin’ Simon. It’s not a phrase we’d have imagined saying once more, within the context of a live performance tour, after Paul Simon wrapped up his official farewell tour seven years in the past. There was cause to consider he had legitimate causes for marking that as his actual goodbye to highway exhibits, and never because the type of fake-out retirement that so many performers money in on after which renege on. However he has discovered options to the problems that may have saved him off-stage. By the point he kicked off a five-night stand at Walt Disney Live performance Corridor this week, Simon was a full 40 exhibits into his 2025 “Quiet Celebration” outing. And he was sounding… sure, softer (as promised within the tour title!) however, actually, undiminished. We’ve by no means had a greater cause to be glad somebody went again on their phrase.

You may take a look at the “A Quiet Celebration Tour” moniker and ask, as your first query: Effectively, how a lot quieter? And the reply is: not terribly a lot. You shouldn’t mistake this for an all-acoustic tour, though that’s the tone that’s taken previous to the present’s intermission, when Simon and his band play again his most up-to-date album, 2023’s “Seven Psalms,” in its front-to-back, suite-style entirety, principally solemn and with out a lot in the best way of tempo or electrical energy. However then, within the second act and encores, you get 15 catalog picks, together with some tunes that rely as rabble-rousers by Simon requirements. The night does turns into a celebration, regardless of his greatest intentions to maintain it down.

There’s a subtlety to what makes this tour so profitable that actually does have one thing to do with quantity, or the looks of it. Simon has as many as 11 gamers on stage at a time, and in the course of the classics, they’re all enjoying kind of the identical very busy components they’d have performed earlier than, on a “Graceland” or a “Cool, Cool River” or perhaps a “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” But the preparations have been calibrated in order that the loudest songs appear ever-so-slightly dialed down, virtually imperceptibly, to match what may be somewhat completely different for the frontman this time round. Any sense of that received’t come as a whole shock to the viewers, as a result of Simon has been open about his listening to points, stating that solely by means of an elaborate, superior system of stage displays has he felt like he might fairly tour once more. There’s additionally the matter of his voice, which is somewhat bit softer with age. It’s as if every thing has been finely tuned to permit Simon to behave his age (which is 83), with out doing any type of stinting on the wealthy and able-bodied performances.

The efficiency of “Seven Psalms” is referred to by Simon as “the primary half,” though, by precise quantity, it’s nicely beneath that. It’s secure to guess that many of the viewers is available in being unfamiliar with the file, and that is the place the reserving of fine-arts joints like Disney Corridor turns out to be useful, as even attendees who haven’t come to see the symphony there can nonetheless fairly simply intuit that the venue lends itself to a type of hush and a few targeted consideration abilities. The folky “Seven Psalms” exists just about on the meditative, impressionistic and religious finish of his spectrum — excluding “My Skilled Forgiveness,” which comes in the course of the suite and lands with a playful blues really feel. It has Simon grappling with the idea of God and exploring unreconciled relationships within the later chapters of life, and it’s not simply graspable on first pay attention. However perhaps the performances on this tour are inspiring much more individuals to take a look at certainly one of 2023’s most unfairly ignored albums, one which has precisely the ambition and private which means you’d hope for from a terrific artist who has no want to enter that good night time coasting.

The seven tune titles from this album helpfully appeared on an overhead display as their quantity got here up, to supply a sign of transition with out something as gauche as truly pausing the music for applause. However the album is admittedly greater than seven numbers, for the reason that opening tune, “The Lord,” will get a number of unbilled reprises because the suite programs alongside. That tune alone, in its many iterations, counts as a serious latter-day Simon work, as he ponders each attainable approach of wanting on the Lord, from shepherd to wrecking ball, incorporating each essentially the most Christian and essentially the most irreverent attainable imagery. By the point he’s sung by means of all of it, you received’t precisely know whether or not the singer is a believer or hardened skeptic, however you’ll know that Simon, the magical poet and baseball nut, has lined all bases.

His spouse, Edie Brickell, got here out to visitor on the tune cycle’s closing two components, “The Sacred Harp” and “Wait,” as she apparently does each night time on the tour. She stands on the alternative facet of the stage from Simon, to sing her components, however in musical spirit, at the least, they’re as shut as the 2 owls perched collectively on the “Seven Psalms” album cowl. An idea album that begins out being all about God lastly ends on one thing extra knowable on this life — the bonding with one other human being — and once they sing “Amen” in concord to finish the cycle, it feels prefer it has to do with Simon dealing with eternity and with placing a divine seal on his and Brickell’s enduring love affair.

After which the longer second “half” rewards followers for any endurance with that opening with a set that hits all of the Simon fandom pleasure facilities. He hits virtually al the apparent best hits (albeit no “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “You Can Name Me Al”) and finds a couple of deeper cuts (like “St. Judy’s Comet,” a 50-year-old observe from “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon” that’d apparently been carried out not even a dozen instances previous to this tour).

The band acquired much more exercise on a few of these oldies than on the extra minimalist and hypnotic “Seven Psalms” materials. The presence of two veteran sidemen in Simon’s solid made for particularly memorable and even touching moments. The bass participant, Bakithi Kumalo, was launched because the final surviving member of Simon’s unique South African “Graceland” band, and his hyperlink to the frontman’s (arguably) most important period was invaluable with some fleeting signature vocalizations. In the meantime, Steve Gadd, certainly one of three drummers or percussionists within the ensemble, was again within the fold from the early ’70s to play what might rely as pop music’s most well-known snare drum half, on the encore of “509 Methods to Go away Your Lover.” And if that isn’t definitely worth the worth of admission…

Horns and strings had their place — principally the latter, with viola participant Caleb Burhans and cellist Eugene Friesen managing to sound like almost a full Kronos Quartet up there at instances. (Friesen’s instrumental entwining with Simon’s acoustic guitar throughout a stripped-down portion of “Slip Slidin’ Away” was a beautiful instance.) Nothing was too radically rearranged, though you possibly can discover that “Homeward Sure” had been subtly remodeled into extra of a rustic tune, between the train-like sound of brushes on drums and Mick Rossi’s lilting piano line.

The display on this half was used for the occasional picture illustration as a substitute of the earlier act’s tune titles: When you ever needed to see the precise picture that impressed “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Canine After the Warfare,” there you had it. And “The Late Nice Johnny Ace,” which had an unusually expansive spoken intro by Simon, climaxed with the sight of Johnny Ace, JFK and John Lennon facet by facet on the massive display, every of them with “Johnny Ace” because the caption beneath his title.

Brickell made a return look, getting into from the wings to contribute a whistling solo to “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” On this tune, which served as climax to the primary set, it was just like the night had been the live performance equal of “Benjamin Button” — starting with Simon in his superior years wanting into the good past, and ending with him as a schoolboy.

However the denouement grew somber once more, with Simon lastly alone on stage with simply his acoustic guitar for firm, bringing issues again to an origin level differently with a closing rendition of “The Sound of Silence.” Simply as we have been all born in mud and to mud we will return, so it’s with silence, perhaps for any of us, however particularly for a Paul Simon who (together with Garfunkel) had that existential hymn as his fluky first No. 1 smash 60 years in the past.

To return to a burning query, or at the least one which was on the minds of followers earlier than this tour began: What is the sound of Simon proper now — his singing voice, significantly? When he appeared on the “SNL 50” particular lately, there was some alarm that he didn’t sound as youthful as, nicely, his duet accomplice Sabrina Carpenter. Or, to provide the scoffers extra credit score, as sturdy as he did even on his earlier twenty first century excursions, pre-retirement. The reply to that must be a reassuring one, for anybody who hasn’t but caught the tour and is considering scoring a resale ticket earlier than it’s throughout. The easiest way to explain it’s that, for perhaps the primary 60 seconds of the present, it’s possible you’ll be struck by how Simon’s voice sounds a bit extra fragile, at this age… after which after that temporary interval of adjustment, you overlook about it. It’s uncommon to note many excessive notes that has been scaled down for age, and also you by no means have to fret about him lacking any notes. (And he didn’t sound any worse the damage for simply having had the again surgical procedure for acute ache that pressured him to cancel a pair earlier exhibits… the one reference to having been beneath the knife being an acknowledgement on the high of the present that he’d had “the craziest week.”)

So, in different phrases, in one of the simplest ways, he appears like an 83-year-old choirboy. How lucky are we to unexpectedly get to share his sanctuary once more?

Setlist for Paul Simon at Walt Disney Live performance Corridor, July 9, 2025:

Set 1: Seven Psalms
“The Lord”
“Love Is Like a Braid”
“My Skilled Opinion”
“Your Forgiveness”
“Path of Volcanoes”
“The Sacred Harp”
“Wait”

Set 2:
“Graceland”
“Slip Slidin’ Away”
“Prepare within the Distance”
“Homeward Sure”
“The Late Nice Johnny Ace”
“St. Judy’s Comet”
“Underneath African Skies”
“Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Canine After the Warfare”
“Rewrite”
“Spirit Voices”
“The Cool, Cool River”
“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”

Encores:
“50 Methods to Go away Your Lover”
“The Boxer”
“The Sound of Silence”

The remaining dates on Paul Simon’s 2025 tour:
July 12 Disney Corridor, Los Angeles, CA 
July 14 Disney Corridor, Los Angeles, CA 
July 16 Disney Corridor, Los Angeles, CA 
 July 19 Davies Symphony Corridor, San Francisco, CA
July 21 Davies Symphony Corridor, San Francisco, CA
July 22 Davies Symphony Corridor, San Francisco, CA
 July 25 The Orpheum, Vancouver BC 
July 26 The Orpheum, Vancouver BC 
July 28 The Orpheum, Vancouver BC 
 July 31  Benaroya Corridor, Seattle, WA
August 2 Benaroya Corridor, Seattle, WA
August 3  Benaroya Corridor, Seattle, WA