CONCERT REVIEW: Paul Simon @ Merriam Theatre 6/4

Add up all the adjectives ever applied to Paul Simon and "difficult" will come near the bottom, but his latest album, So Beautiful or So What, actually takes a few spins to grab hold.

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CONCERT REVIEW: Paul Simon @ Merriam Theatre 6/4

POSTED: Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 12:00 PM

Filed Under: Music Concert Review

Add up all the adjectives ever applied to Paul Simon and “difficult” will come near the bottom, but his latest album, So Beautiful or So What, actually takes a few spins to grab hold. Songs like “Rewrite” are built around spiraling guitar figures that never settle into a comfortable strum, as if they’re swirling around a center that never materializes.

His show at the Merriam Theatre followed suit, using an eight-piece band whose ever-shifting lineup pushed even Simon’s greatest hits into new territory. Half the ensemble switched to guitar to back Simon on “Rewrite,” while the drumsticks came out for “The Obvious Child.” The sound of a grand piano pushed “Slip Slidin’ Away” into melancholy territory, befitting a song written when Simon was half his current age. Perhaps most transformed was “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” whose parade-drum rhythm was pushed to the front. The song seemed to send out tendrils, expanding like smoke, wiping away its millions of radio plays and allowing the audience to hear it anew.

Simon is a solid but rarely revelatory songwriter; there’s still a trace of sophomore coffee-shop poetry in his lyrics. But he has exquisite taste in backing musicians, even when he’s not raiding exotic traditions wholesale. Drummer Jim Oblon proved himself capable of laying down a bass drum and hi-hat beat while using his hands to play a mean guitar solo during a cover of “Mystery Train” — not a great choice for Simon’s vocal style, but an entertaining run-through all the same. If Simon’s show didn’t break much new ground, it showed great aplomb in retracing his steps.

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