Paul Simon turned 65 a few weeks ago, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. He may be a rock, but he’s not really a rocker, let alone a rolling stone. And that’s convenient, because it means he doesn’t have to strut around in stretch pants, unlike some of his fellow sexagenarians. His fans don’t ask much of him. They don’t want him to impersonate a teenager. They just want him to strum and murmur those wistful songs, singing words written by a young man who was already old at heart.
Paul Simon offered fans tricky new songs and tricked-out old ones at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday.
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Fortunately, he still asks a lot of his fans. And at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night, Mr. Simon put on an engrossing and audacious show, full of tricky new songs and tricked-out old ones.
Over the years, his lyrics have grown more particular; unexpected details keep his verses off balance. And as millions of “Graceland” fans know, his music has grown more buoyant; two decades after that album, he is still obsessed with clattering, skittering rhythms. Saturday’s concert helped show how those two trends — more words, more grooves — are really one.
Mr. Simon’s most recent album, “Surprise” (Warner Brothers), was released in May, and it is a collaboration with the pioneering electronic producer Brian Eno, who is listed as the creator of the album’s “sonic landscape.” That means the musicians are complemented by all sorts of lovely buzzes and hums and electronic beats.
“Surprise” doesn’t add up to a great album, but it has moments, especially a glorious four-song run at the end. The first of the four is “Another Galaxy,” a lightheaded ode to a runaway bride; the last is “Father and Daughter,” a lullaby that originally appeared on the soundtrack to “The Wild Thornberrys Movie,” a 2002 animated film. Mr. Simon sang that song on Saturday, lingering on a warm, weird analogy: “I’m gonna stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever.”
Many of these new songs are made of parts that don’t quite fit — aren’t meant to fit, one assumes. Mr. Simon sang “Wartime Prayers,” which brings together a meandering verse and a refrain that strains (too hard, perhaps) for grandeur. And he sang “How Can You Live in the Northeast?”; the song kept unfolding until it had been transformed into a hazy jam session.
All night long, Mr. Simon kept returning to “Graceland,” the extraordinary 1986 album he made with South African musicians; it’s an investment that is still paying dividends. He sang 6 of that album’s 11 songs. And Bakithi Kumalo, a bassist who played on that album, remains part of Mr. Simon’s touring band; he locked in with a pair of drummers, including Steve Gadd, who first recorded with Mr. Simon more than three decades ago. When “Outrageous,” another new song, morphed into a South African groove, it felt as if Mr. Simon had gone back home.
In the years before and after “Graceland,” Mr. Simon has explored everything from salsa to batucada. If this rhythm obsession seems like an odd preoccupation for a mellow folkie, Saturday’s concert showed why it isn’t. Mr. Simon’s obsession with rhythm is related to his obsession with language. By packing his verses full of words, he emphasizes the complicated rhythms of spoken English. He needs a rhythm section that can keep up with his mouth.
You could hear this clearly during a sparse and propulsive version of the title track from “Graceland.” One stanza begins:
There is a girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I’m falling, flying or tumbling in turmoil I say, “Oh, so this is what she means.”
That’s a mouthful. But if you add a nimble bass line, Mr. Simon sounds less like a chatterbox and more like a great percussionist.
Mr. Simon found ways to bring out the tricky rhythms in older songs, too. When it came time for “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” he rephrased the lyrics so that the words emerged in multi-syllable clumps. “Mrs. Robinson” received a raucous rockabilly makeover. And he ended the concert with a sprightly, bluegrass-inflected version of “The Boxer,” featuring his opening act, the Dobro player Jerry Douglas.
Through it all, he seemed slightly uncomfortable, which is probably no coincidence. With those tangled-up words and rhythms, Mr. Simon’s best music (and, sometimes, his worst) is pretty uncomfortable, too. And in that sense, this fidgety night was, among many other things, a homecoming concert — one with more than a hint of nervous energy — that suited both the man and the city. “I always say to myself, ‘Just another show,’ ” he said, near the beginning. “But, ehhh — it’s not the case.”
