Paul simon

In The Blue Light

Forgotten Simon ephemera, reimagined. Every life has loose ends that need tying. So as Paul Simon takes his final bow on his farewell tour, he also revisits tracks he felt he didn’t get quite right the first time round.

On In The Blue Light, old blues and country pieces like 1973’s One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor and 1980’s How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns are recast as smoky jazz-bar nocturnes, a clutch of songs from 2000’s You’re The One get a dusky Latino makeover and Can’t Run But, from 1990’s The Rhythm Of The Saints, becomes an edgy string piece, its South American rhythm and heat fed through oboe and flute.

To some degree these re-imaginings age the songs, strip them of more youthful textures and slot them into more trad categories, but there’s a real sense of late-in-the-evening fun to the playful ragtime take on 2000’s Pigs, Sheep And Wolves and a fresh chamber grace to 1983’s Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War. As a craftsman’s final flick on old canvases, it makes for a fine late Blue period.