Paul Simon, Bloomsbury Theatre, London

By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

“Who’s going to love you when your looks are gone?” Paul Simon asks sardonically on his new album Surprise, though perhaps there is a quiver of apprehension in his voice too. His last solo projects were a Broadway play that flopped and an album that came and went without impact. That was six years ago. Now he’s 64, and the distance between him and the hits of his youth grows ever greater.

This one-off concert, recorded for a radio broadcast [BBC], took us on an abbreviated tour of his career in a far tinier venue than Simon is accustomed to: his previous appearance in London was at a huge gig in Hyde Park two years ago with his former sparring partner Art Garfunkel, on their optimistically titled “Old Friends” tour (they have had a famously tempestuous relationship).

The four new songs he debuted were patchy. Played live by a band, they were shorn of the embellishments Brian Eno brings to the recorded versions as Surprise’s producer (he is credited as providing a “sonic landscape”, tricking out Simon’s harmonies with a palette of ambient sound effects and chattering percussion).

Eno’s absence was not noticeable in the case of “Outrageous”, whose busy changes in tempo and appealing melodies needed no bolstering. “How Can You Live in the Northeast”, bobbing along on a buoyant, choppy guitar line and lush choruses, also worked well.

But the introspective, jazzy rhythms of “Wartime Prayers” were meandering and dull, though better that than the syrupy goo of “Father and Daughter”, which tapped deep into a seam of sentimentality that runs beneath Simon’s smart, witty lyrics.

He couldn’t go wrong with the rest of the set, however, which took us back to prime Simon and Garfunkel (“The Boxer”, “Cecilia”) and cherrypicked highlights from his solo work such as “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” and, best of all, “Slip Sliding Away”. His voice has grown thinner but the breadth and range of his music remain striking.