Paul Simon aging gracefully as latest tour, A Quiet Celebration, wows Toronto
There’s a fragility and honesty combined with humour and charm about Simon in his current state that makes you want to cheer him on
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Paul Simon
Massey Hall
Thursday night
RATING: **** (four out of four)
Paul Simon isn’t slip slidin’ away.
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On the contrary.
The 83-year-old master storyteller — who is aging well in his twilight years — instead personifies the final lyrics in the Simon and Garfunkel classic The Boxer: “I am leaving, I’m leaving, but the fighter still remains.”
In short, Simon, backed by a crack band — including three percussionists and a string section — plus his not-so-secret weapon and wife Edie Brickell (formerly of the New Bohemians) who joined her husband for four songs, wowed on Thursday night at Massey Hall during the second of three shows at the venue, which he described as “a musician’s delight. You can hear everything.”
Simon’s A Quiet Celebration Tour may describe the tone of his two-hour-and-20-minute show — which sees him playing new songs, classics and deep cuts over multiple nights in intimate venues around North America because of the severe hearing loss he’s suffered over the last few years — but it doesn’t really do justice to the genuinely moving, sometimes melancholy career-spanning performance that unfolds.
There’s a fragility and honesty combined with humour and charm about Simon in his current state that makes you want to cheer him on.
For example, when people were shouting out requests during the first encore, Simon cheekily chose instead to do a song he said he “loathes,” Feelin’ Groovy, and the audience couldn’t get enough of it.
It was during the recording of his latest album, Seven Psalms, that Simon began to steadily lose the hearing in his left ear. The condition initially made touring impossible, but with help from the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss, and his own production team, Simon redesigned his entire stage setup to make performing work including moving monitors to surround him.
The evening began with all 33 minutes of Seven Psalms, a serious, sombre and religious-minded collection of seven songs that segue one into the other as a continuous piece of music starting with My Lord and ending with Wait (the latter for which he was joined by Brickell plus the previous song The Sacred Harp).
Then it was time for the mega-hits like the opening verse of America — he explained he’d currently found the best of America in Canada, “a beacon in the dark,” Graceland, Slip Slidin’ Away, Homeward Bound, Under African Skies (with Brickell again), Mother and Child Reunion, Me and Julio Down the Schoolyard, and three encores consisting of Feelin’ Groovy, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, The Boxer, which produced lots of singing and clapping, and the show-ending The Sound Of Silence featuring Simon on stage alone with just his acoustic guitar.
The band, meanwhile, which includes Bakithi Kumalo (bass) who’s the last remaining band member from the Graceland band sessions, seemed to take as much delight in playing alongside Simon as they did in watching him, along with the rest of us.
He is scheduled to play his final Toronto show on Friday night.
SETLIST:
The Lord
Love Is Like A Braid
My Professional Opinion
Your Forgiveness
Trail of Volcanoes
The Sacred Harp (with Edie Brickell)
Wait (with Edie Brickell)
(INTERMISSION)
America (First Verse Only)
Graceland
Slip Slidin’ Away
Train in the Distance
Homeward Bound
The Late Great Johnny Ace
St. Judy’s Comet
Under African Skies (with Edie Brickell)
Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
Rewrite
Spirit Voices
Mother and Child Reunion
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (with Edie Brickell whistling)
ENCORE:
Feelin’ Groovy
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
ENCORE 2:
The Boxer
ENCORE 3:
The Sound of Silence (solo without band)
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