Just days before masses of people descended on the District of Columbia for Memorial Day, Paul Simon paid a visit to D.A.R. Constitution Hall, one of the city’s most patriotic venues. Whatever political subject may have been on the 69-year-old legend’s mind, he kept banter to a bare minimum, quipping only that he recalled “playing here with Artie in the 60’s.” The rest of the set, which ran just over two hours, was an unabated dose of Simon’s awe-inspiring songwriting and his band’s considerable abilities.
Simon’s latest album, So Beautiful or So What, is already considered to be one of the year’s finest releases. The juxtaposition of new material and timeless classics in concert further reveals the high quality of Simon’s recent work. Of course the variably-aged crowd cheered loudest for quintessential hits like “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and both renditions deserved much adulation. But the new stuff enthralled as well. The pairing of the old “Crazy Love Vol. 2” and the new “Dazzling Blue” opened the show in regal fashion, while dense new works “Love Is Eternal Sacred Light” and “So Beautiful or So What” conjured just as much instrumental voodoo as any of Simon’s standbys. A considerable light show and ever-changing backdrop treated the eyes during the revved-up “That Was Your Mother” and the meaty “Hearts and Bones.” The lovable “Rewrite” was warmly welcomed by the audience, but in the end flagship tunes like “The Obvious Child,” “Slip Slidin’ Away,” “Mother and Child Reunion,” and “The Only Living Boy in New York” deservedly won the largest ovations.
Simon offered encores that have become standard for this tour, and no other configuration could have been more welcome. There’s a reason that the show’s ending sequence of songs rarely changes. Simon performed one of he and Garfunkel’s most important songs, “Sound of Silence,” solo before the band stormed the stage for a jubilant combo of “Kodachrome” and “Gone at Last.” The impressive light show turned up a notch for a cover of “Here Comes The Sun” and the thumping “Late in the Evening” before the whole affair ended with two songs from different eras of Simon’s career: the plaintive “Still Crazy After All These Years” and the scintillating squeezebox stomp of Graceland’s “Boy in the Bubble.” Over the course of 24 songs, Simon and his incredible band created a career-spanning show with impeccable playing and fantastic flow, yet they barely scratched the surface of his catalog. Thinking of what he didn’t play further increases the impact of seeing him live, as there’s an entire show’s worth of well-known material that hasn’t been in the rotation this year. But the show as a whole benefited from the infusion of new material. Just to be in the man’s presence was enough to make the show special. The fact that he gave it his all made the evening that much better.
