SAN DIEGO — Paul Simon is still crazy — and very resourceful — after all these years.

He is also on the road again on with his aptly named “A Quiet Celebration Tour,” whose 2025 debut came seven years after the conclusion of his “Homeward Bound: The Farewell Tour” in 2018. Just how resourceful Simon is, nearly a decade later, was made crystal clear at his sold-out Tuesday night San Diego concert at The Shell, where he opened solemnly with “The Lord” and concluded with goosebump-inspiring performances of “The Boxer” and “The Sound of Silence.”

It was the storied singer-songwriter’s first area performance since his show at SDSU’s Viejas Arena in late 2011 — and 20 years since he first performed on a makeshift stage in 2006 at Embarcadero Marina Park South, where The Shell opened in 2021.

Simon was a comparatively young man of 63 when he played here in 2006. Now, at 84, this two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is undeniably impacted by the passing of time, as was demonstrated by his deeply moving concert. He has grown old, like many of his longtime fans, and his vulnerability brings an added intimacy to his music.

The New Jersey native now speaks with more of a quaver in his voice and he has only 6% of the hearing in his left ear. As a result, Simon and his superb, predominantly acoustic band are performing at a significantly lower volume level than in previous decades. He also eschews more upbeat songs, such as the brassy “You Can Call Me Al” and “Late in the Evening,” in favor of understated, more delicate selections that benefit from being performed with a deliberate kind of a hush.

That Simon’s voice has lost some of its range, power and projection is undeniable. But the same holds true for James Taylor, 78 — who performed a sold-out concert of his own at The Shell on April 28 — and for other graying pop-music legends, whose love of making music continues unabated well past the age when many of their peers and fans have retired.

Unlike the strained, off-key bleating of Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and Mike Love of the Beach Boys (the latter of whom will perform June 27 at The Shell with the San Diego Symphony), Simon can still sing in key. Better yet, unlike them, he does not induce repeated winces each time he delivers lyrics that he wrote 50 or 60 years ago.

Tuesday’s concert saw Simon stretching as far back as 1964 for the concert-closing “The Sound of Silence” and to 1970 for “The Boxer,” two Simon & Garfunkel classics that still rank among the finest, most resonant songs he has written. He also performed all seven selections from his most recent release, 2023’s “Seven Psalms,” a whisper-soft meditation on life, mortality and love that constituted the first half of his two-part concert here.

As he essayed “Seven Psalms” with a half-sung, half-spoken delivery, the weathered fragility of Simon’s voice added to the pathos of his deeply introspective lyrics. While “The Lord,” “Love Is Like a Braid” and “Your Forgiveness” are infused with a deep sense of wistful melancholy, “The Sacred Harp” and “Wait” — both of which featured the dulcet tones of Simon’s wife, singer Edie Brickell — exult in the joys of love.

As on the “Seven Psalms” album, the instrumentation was spare and unobtrusive. Fans of the iconoclastic composer and one-of-a-kind instrument-maker Harry Partch, this writer included, were excited to see and hear Simon band keyboardist and percussionist Mick Rossi gently perform on facsimiles of the late Partch’s other worldly Cloud Chamber Bowls, which are struck with mallets and made from the bottoms of oversized 12-gallon Pyrex glass containers. Simon uses the Cloud Chamber Bowls on his “Seven Psalms” album and also featured them on his sadly underappreciated 2016 release, “Stranger to Stranger.”

The capacity audience of 7,300 at The Shell listened attentively to the largely unfamiliar “Seven Psalms” songs and responded politely. The crowd was, unsurprisingly, far more enthusiastic when Simon opened his 16-song second set with the propulsive title track from his landmark 1986 album, “Graceland.”

That song, a wonderful fusion of rockabilly and South African township-jive music, was a highlight, as were two other numbers from the same album — “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” and “Under African Skies.” So were “Spirit Voices” and the dramatically surging “The Cool, Cool River,” both from Simon’s even better 1990 album, “The Rhythm of the Saints.”

Both of the latter songs were splendid showcases for his superb, one-woman, 10-man band. The musicians shined equally whether playing with chamber-music nuance, folk-rocking jingle-jangle or jazzy abandon, and they served each finely calibrated song with admirable sensitivity. For those who missed Tuesday’s performance, “Paul Simon: The Quiet Celebration Concert” will debut June 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

A musical craftsman of rare skill, Simon expertly paced his setlist to mix fresh renditions of some of his most beloved songs with such lesser known deep-album cuts as “St. Judy’s Comet” and “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War” that he was eager to explore anew.

Or, as he put it in his 2007 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: “If the song is a good song, you can play it a lot of ways and it should still be a good song. But just because I’m not trying to suck up to an audience (with note-for-note replications of his hits) doesn’t mean I’m indifferent. I like it to be an entertaining night; I just want it to be interesting. That, for me, is the essence.”

Simon hit his marks time and again Tuesday, keeping things very interesting throughout. He also benefited from the best sound mix I have heard at any concert at The Shell since the bayside venue opened six years ago.

The once-bouncy “Slip Slidin’ Away” was slower and almost mournful. “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” one of two songs Simon featured Tuesday from his under-sung 1983 album, “Hearts and Bone,” was both a lament for its titular musical namesake and a gentle salute to the doo-wop vocal groups that greatly inspired Simon as a teenager growing up in New York.

The deftly layered “Train in the Distance” began as a bluesy shuffle, then shifted to light swing and back again. The song took on an unintended new dimension in light of the nearby Saturday train derailment, which has shut down a portion of Harbor Drive and led to a 30-minute or longer traffic backup for concertgoers on a night that also saw the San Diego Padres play a sold-out home game at nearby Petco Park.

Simon was an engaging presence, bantering with fans between songs and joking that he’d rather be watching the concert from one of the nearby sailboats. When an attendee seated near the stage with a service dog called out, Simon inquired about the name of the dog, then asked which song he performed was the dog’s favorite.

The 1973 gem “Something So Right” was the second of Simon’s four encore numbers. It combined musical effervescence with apparently autobiographical lyrics about a lovestruck man who is challenged by a relation that appears to be problem-free.

While the concert-concluding “The Sound of Silence” provided a near-benediction for the night, it was the preceding song, “The Boxer,” that may have provided the emotional highpoint. When Simon sang the words I am leaving, but the fighter still remains, it was a statement of fact, not a boast, from a storied musician who — in the autumn of his years — isn’t yet ready to call it a day. The crowd responded with an ovation worthy of a champion.

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