Rating: 5/5
Review:
An excellent live album
This is a fine live recording. It is in two halves; the first half is very
good and the second half is absolutely stunning.
Disc 1, the first half of the concert, is a very good
performance of some of Paul Simon's greatest hits – which is all you need to
know, really. The man has written and
performed some of the very greatest songs of the last 50 years and these are
fine performances, including some nice duetting with Jimmy Cliff. However, it's the second half that makes this
really special, I think.
The great bulk of Part 2 is a performance of the Graceland
album with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Joseph Shabalala, Hugh Masekela and the
original Graceland band.
It is quite brilliant; great material, of course, but superb performances,
too, full of brilliant musicianship, great singing and genuine, moving power
and emotion. It is rare for me to find a
live performance as good as or better than a studio original, but this is at
least as good as the original Graceland album for me. It is followed by some more magnificent Simon
classics, of which my highlight is a breathtaking version of The Sound Of
Silence, beautifully sung solo by Paul accompanied by just a wonderfully played
single guitar. It's quite spellbinding
and gives me goosebumps every time I hear it – even more than half a century on
from first hearing the song.
The sound quality throughout is excellent and the engineers
do a fine job of balancing the crowd noise to convey the excitement of the live
concert but never interfering with the music itself; it's never an easy balance
to strike but it's perfect here, I think.
I'm not always a great fan of live albums but this is a real
beauty. It's up there with Paul Simon's
best recordings, I think – which is really saying something. Very, very warmly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment