Paul Simon - The Quiet Celebration Concert [3LP]

Paul Simon stepped off the road in 2018, and The Quiet Celebration Concert documents his unhurried return across three LPs recorded live at McCaw Hall in Seattle.

The tour deliberately favoured smaller rooms chosen for their acoustics, and that intimacy shapes everything here. The first two sides are given over to Seven Psalms, his GRAMMY-nominated 2023 suite, performed live in full for the first time. Heard in one uninterrupted sweep, it plays like a long, searching meditation on faith and mortality, delivered with remarkable calm.

The remaining four sides turn to the songbook, in reworked arrangements that suit the hushed setting. Graceland opens the second half with a gentle lilt, and Edie Brickell joins him for Under African Skies. The Boxer arrives as a singalong in waiting, and The Sound of Silence brings the evening to a fittingly quiet close.

Simon's phrasing remains as precise as ever, and the stripped-back approach gives songs written decades apart a shared sense of perspective.

This is a late-career statement from one of the great American songwriters, presented with the patience it deserves. For listeners who have followed him from Simon & Garfunkel onwards, it is a moving document of an artist still finding new light in his own catalogue.