Pop Music : Simon on High Note With Blues Delivery

Five years or so after “Graceland,” Paul Simon the multiculturalist is more old hat than revolutionary. After all, even though he brought his 17-piece international band to the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night, his particular melting pot was beaten there by several weeks by the L.A. Philharmonic’s own multiculturalist night. These days, all the kids are doin’ it, and Simon’s no longer anywhere near the edge of the envelope.

Paul Simon the Blues Singer, though, is still as vital as ever.

Folks with too much time on their hands can argue endlessly over whether Simon “rips off other cultures,” but the fact is that his recent “She Moves On,” with its percussive Brazilian and African stylings, and old “The Sounds of Silence,” done as a concert-closer mostly with just one neo-folkie electric guitar, are both great blues , of the white-guy’s-burden variety.

At the Bowl, it was Simon’s very oldest and very newest material that tended to leave the strongest impression, from the five mostly downbeat Simon & Garfunkel classics resurrected to the six drivingly percussive selections from “The Rhythm of the Saints”--the common thread being Simon’s melancholic, guardedly pessimistic sensibility finding expressionist beauty.

When it arrived a year ago, the “Rhythm” album didn’t have the initial impact that its predecessor, “Graceland,” did; that first stab at marrying ethnically diverse, imported sounds with Simon’s trademark introspection had a more captivatingly joyful tone on the surface. With “Rhythm,” he cut out some of the livelier trappings and went for gentler undercurrents, something a little more mellow and perhaps truer to his somber material.

As a result, subtle as it was, “Rhythm” holds up remarkably well and has provided some of this tour’s surprising highlights--though the most enthused audience response was still reserved for happy-time hits like “You Can Call Me Al” and “Late in the Evening,” as the conga lines began to snake through the Bowl.

Probably the cleverest song sequence came early in the 2 1/2-hour show, as the violent-feeling psychodrama of “The Cool, Cool River”--from the latest album--gave way to another, far more soothing aquatic number, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” done here as a gospel-reggae tune. In turn, that song, a classic expression of faith, gave way to a newer number about the impossibility of true faith, “Proof.” A neat transition, for the attentive.

As a crowning touch, during the usual fake-out rest in the middle of “Proof,” Simon gave out the current local baseball score, informing the capacity crowd that the Dodgers were ahead of the Giants--in a way, turning the light-hearted song back into a statement of faith after all. Go, team.