Paul Simon is 72 years Interesting ten years younger, both belonging to the finest music elite and at some point the idea came up that they should play together. It is possible that it was a good idea, but it is so, not quite well executed.
With the tour “on stage together” traveling the world with 30 songs from a back catalog of hits. The prosaic tour title sets the tone. The same between the snack and the same song order, probably the same solos every night. And there are many solos. Sixteen piece band consisting of musicians from their touring band is furious skillful and gets very place, and it does not interfere at all.
But it is sad that it is heard that Sting and Simon tired of some of their most loved songs and therefore allows the interspersed solos on piano, guitar, tuba, electric violin – what’s not here – wear them instead.
With that said: nothing is bad handcrafted seen. Sting’s “Brand New Day” opens the concert, followed by Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble” and an uninspired “Fields of Gold” with Simon on lead vocals. After these initial common numbers are Simon the scene and Stings years The Police is represented by “So Lonely” and “When the world is running down” the hard, tight versions. In “Driven to tears” playing violinist of the horsehair bow while Sting stands steady and happy with the base of the stomach.
When Paul Simon takes over the stage lightened things up. “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” has delicate percussion games and anything related to arrive. Simon is in a richer musical culture than Sting with American hymns, cajun zydeco rooted, South African choral tradition – all this finesse in the world that he has discovered and embraced. In “Dazzling Blue” sparkles both darbuka, a sort of Arabic drum, and gatam, an Indian ones.
The concert glow available in these less known songs. Paul Simon’s joy lies in playing with the musicians and he moves like a fish in water in the roots and folk music. Sting’s best number is also the more suggestive “Hounds of Winter” and “The End of the Game,” when running vocalist Jo Lawry comes forward with an impressive safe and strong voice that is not heard in a while in the pop world.
Just when I think about how many in the audience who came to hear “Sounds of Silence” begins the two legendary performers sing “The Boxer”. It’s like Goran Palm poem about the Louvre – oh well, there’s “The Boxer”. It says Paul Simon. But it does not lift.
“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” does not lift. “You can call me Al” does not lift. The concert will not lift. Perhaps it is because many fixed phrases that everyone knows how they sound on the disc: whistle Julio, the saxophone in “Englishman in New York”. The dear kind ace hands of time with Simon & amp; Garfunkel could have been someone else, Paul Simon makes them with a shrug and when Sting makes “America”, the simple view that Simon in his prime sang so natural and fine, to a glorified declamation, it feels like a sacrilege.
Benny Andersson has answered so wisely on the recurring question of whether Abba’ll play again that people think it would be so amazing, but it would probably not be as amazing as people think. It never drops below into the same river twice.
In line with what one might have expected that Paul Simon and Sting would have written something new, they sang jazz standards or something from Sting’s repertoire with Renaissance composer John Dowland, short surprised in any way. But the evening ends with additional numbers “Cecilia”, “Every Breath You Take” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in close succession. Such an audience courtship is a little too tired from two highly vital musicians.
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