Paul Simon/Photo: Matthew Straubmuller

For more than sixty years, Paul Simon has both worked within and expanded American folk traditions. His songwriting, which sounds more like poetry, holds up the instrumentals that often fall away to reveal his messages, foregrounding a latent political edge within catchy songs. This is especially true in his most recent album, “Seven Psalms,” released in 2023, which generated enough fanfare to encourage Simon out of retirement, along with a partial recovery in his hearing loss. “A Quiet Celebration,” his first tour in years, arrives just outside of Chicago at Ravinia for two nights on July 17-18.

This summer’s tour allows Simon to speak candidly to his fans of many faiths and political beliefs. Each show contains a thirty-three minute performance of “Seven Psalms,” where he preaches his unique counterculture sentiments to his aging earliest fans who may have strayed from their past ideals. Each of the seven songs off the new album will be performed sequentially, before a second half of the concert dedicated to classic hits spanning his career. The seven Psalms bleed together in content and language, with choruses that repeat across multiple tracks and self-referential call-backs that tie up this new body of work like a clarifying endcap for his career.

One half of Simon & Garfunkel, Paul Simon met Art Garfunkel in school, and they skyrocketed to fame by the end of the 1960s. Together, they won multiple Grammys, had multiple songs inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and, just after the turn of the century, were awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. As a solo artist, Simon won even more Grammys and lifetime achievement awards, with recognitions from numerous institutions that honor the most influential people in music. His talent for telling stories through his songs is undeniable. Instead of fading, his latest work leverages his iconic status with a sermon for his flock. Once a lively narrator for the emergent culture, he continues to speak to his audience, just this time more somberly, recognizing them as the ones who have become the establishment.

Paul Simon’s “Seven Psalms”

He sings what “the Lord is” around the new album many times, emphasizing his spiritual alignment; God can be found in everything from “a welcome door to the stranger” to his record producer. This gospel is anything but aged, as his updated lyrics reference COVID and directly address his listeners, as when his wife sings to them as children about to come home to heaven. Through his candid calls, he leans on his talented lyrics and minimal musical interventions, with spare instrumentation that just barely builds to support critical melodic inversions.

While this latest album has not reached the popularity of his classic hits, presenting the album as an uninterrupted monologue uses his platform to similar political means as his earliest hits. The show, unlike most late-career artists, seems less like a jolly retrospective or promotional gimmick, but more like an opportunity to speak across the aisle and unify his fans. Only then will Simon play from the rest of his impressive discography.

Paul Simon at Ravinia, 418 Sheridan Road, Highland Park, July 17-18.