POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Garfunkel Looks Back in Costa Mesa

What sort of place would Jurassic Park have been if those pesky dinosaurs hadn’t started running amok? Probably a lot like Art Garfunkel’s concert Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

There, a couple dozen specimens from the dim, dark musical past were painstakingly re-created in an exhibit that was, at times, a wonder to behold. Yet as so much backward glancing can get without at least a little good-natured rampaging, it also got just a bit tedious.

In Garfunkel’s case, it’s clear that at this point in his career, his future lies back there, in rock eons gone by.

Nearly half the songs in his two-hour concert were from his Simon & Garfunkel days, and he even threw in one of Simon’s post-breakup compositions, “American Tune.”

He ignored his most recent album, 1988’s “Lefty,” and the only “new” song he sang from a solo album due this fall was his rendition of the Everly Brothers’ “Crying in the Rain,” for which David Crosby ambled onstage to harmonize.

Although the 51-year-old singer’s pitch was problematic in some of the most exposed verses, his voice has taken on a deepened richness--he can conjure a burnished tone that wasn’t there in younger days--and he is still capable of vocal thrills.