Live Review: Paul Simon at the 3Arena

With the release of his 13th studio album Stranger to Stranger earlier this year, Simon can rank himself in an exclusive group of long-standing artists which includes Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and, until recently, Leonard Cohen whose music has weathered the decades and who can still pull in massive crowds whenever they tour.

Thousands gather at the 3Arena to hear Simon for what could very well be the last time before his retirement from music. When he graces the stage, donned casually in jeans, t-shirt and a shiny purple blazer, the resounding cheer that swells from the crowd tells you more about us than it does about the night’s entertainer. In the deluge of modern music and at the tail-end of a terrible year, it takes an artist like Paul Simon to remind us how beautiful music can be. “These are the days of miracle and wonder,” he tells us in his opening song ‘The Boy in the Bubble’. He makes us believe him.

And so follows a set which marries the old with the new, a set which lashes together cultural strains from the diverse ranges of Africa to the dense concrete jungle of the New York City boroughs. His band reflects all this musical diversity – it goes back about four or five rows deep on a stage which is awash with instruments, many of which are niche and unfamiliar.

Before launching into ‘Werewolf’, the first song from his new album, Paul introduces us to a one-string Indian instrument called a Gopichand which makes a howl-like sound. Simon simply explains to us that his son told him about the instrument, he played it, liked it, and so decided to us it. It’s this forthrightness, this openness to influence and experience which gifted us with the African strains on Graceland thirty years ago and brought us every great album since; it’s one of Paul Simon’s defining features.

And in the midst of a set which gives us something from nearly every one of Simon’s albums, from the transcendental rhythms of ‘Spirit Voices’ to the early folk ballad ‘Duncan’, there’s time also for a few Simon and Garfunkel songs, with ‘America’ sounding as full of hope and optimism as it did when it was first recorded (God knows America needs it).

Simon combats the possibility of people getting restless during the show’s midway point by dad-dancing his way through ‘That Was Your Mother’ and imploring us to groove along with him. For those hesitant about dancing at this stage, the bass run of ‘You Can Call Me Al’ kicks in a few songs later and finally whips them into a shape-throwing state.

There’s perfunctory bow-taking and walking off stage after this, but the main man hasn’t even begun to finish. He returns with new song ‘Wristband’ (a song which mixes dry humour with starkly social themes) then launches into ‘Graceland’. Another encore sees him return with ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ – during which he acknowledges his band – then ‘Late in the Evening’, ‘One Man’s Ceiling’, ‘The Boxer’, ‘Sound of Silence’. Naïve audience members who left after the first encore are scurrying back and forth so quickly that they’re getting dizzy, practically fainting as the encores continue and the hits spill out, one after another. Finally bringing things to a close with ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (we’re 29 songs, three hours, and four encores in at this stage), the band line up together and say adieu to their audience and to the end of a monumental European tour.