IN THE post-Simon-and-Garfunkel years Paul Simon has refined to a masterly degree the skill of taking fragments of half-remembered conversations and preserving them in the aspic of notes and chords. That being the case, it should not be surprising that, once the music stops, there isn’t much small talk left to spare.

The affectionate reception for 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover finally relaxed Simon — dressed more like a baseball coach than a pop star — enough to speak to his fans. “How long has it been?” Fifteen years, came the reply. Then, a thoughtful nod. “Has it really?” More nodding. “Anyway, here we are,” he said, hopelessly undercome by emotion.

Perhaps because we have come to expect a default level of sentimentality from visiting Americans, it can be unsettling when an artist like Paul Simon alights upon our shores. That he doesn’t play such games is commendable, but it also meant that in a 10,000-capacity arena the sound of silence echoed a little too noticeably at times. Simon and his band immersed themselves in hushed reconfigurations of Boy in the Bubble and You’re the One, but you sensed that it might take something more visceral to contrive some intimacy here. Happily, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard yielded results. Even if Simon’s fans hadn’t quite loosened up enough to leave their seats for the ribald Cajun abandon of That Was Your Mother, the sight of Simon, sans guitar, dancing as you would expect a 65-year-old dad to dance raised the emotional temperature.

Though nominally here to plug his new Brian Eno-produced album Surprise, he seemed reconciled to the place that 1986’s Graceland has in the affections of his fans. In particular, the sublime synergy between Simon and the Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini on that album’s title track allowed them almost to take leave of the song altogether. Indeed, Nguini was instrumental to many of the evening’s best moments — not least on Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, where he made light work of replicating Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s harmonies.

Even when Simon yields to the inevitable and plays the hits, his chronic aversion to cliché means that the spectacle stops well short of cabaret. Bridge over Troubled Water opened up into sinuous, sleepy funk meditation, and a souped-up Mrs Robinson elicited something approaching boomer- euphoria. Tuning his guitar in advance of The Boxer, Simon paused to make one final declaration: “I can’t express to you how touched I am.” Indeed, he couldn’t. But with songs like that to do it for him it seemed churlish to hold it against him.