It’s curious how familiarity can mute our appreciation of things beautiful, a smirr of ennui may render the song of a thrush or the last rays of a sunset unremarkable. Our senses, tempered by routine are often roused only by novelty’s magnetic pull.

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And isn’t Simon and Garfunkel’s music like that? Always there, like once carefully chosen wallpaper you don’t notice any more.

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Then something comes along to reboot the senses, reset our appreciation threshold, remind us not to take magic for granted.

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That something was Bookends, the Simon and Garfunkel ‘tribute act’. A rather odious expression, so let’s be done with the ‘tribute’ thing from the git-go - they are no more a tribute act than the London Phil are a Beethoven tribute act. Enough said.

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