There was no encore, on Thursday, October 24, not even for his comeback to the great concert hall of La Seine musicale, on the Ile Seguin, in the western Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. A venue he had inaugurated on April 21, 2017. Bob Dylan fans know that, for ages now, the 83-year-old American singer-songwriter has not been a fan of the ritual. Nor is he one of phones, which are locked away in pouches during the concert so that attendees can make the most of it.

There was no change in repertoire from the previous concerts on the European leg of his tour, which began on October 4, in Prague, and will run until November 14, in London – featuring, at La Seine Musicale, a second concert on Friday, sold out like the one on Thursday. With one exception: "Dignity," which he had played on the first night in Prague, and has since replaced with "Watching The River Flow," as indicated by the regularly updated bobdylan.com website.

First came "All Along The Watchtower," and then "It Ain't Me, Babe." Dylan was seated behind his piano, center stage, but, for these two renditions, he played a guitar, which he had hardly used in concerts for years, due to hand and arm pain. He played a few notes on it, more or less fitting with the two songs. These pieces, as has become usual when he revisits his best-known material, bear little relation to the original recordings.

Tonight, as he has every night since 2021, when he resumed his annual tour of some 100 concerts – after a break in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic – Dylan gave pride of place to songs from his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways. Together with his live band – currently guitarists Doug Lancio and Bob Britt, bassist Tony Garnier and drummer Jim Keltner – he performed nine of them, leaving out the last, "Murder Most Foul" and its almost 17-minute runtime.

Despite Dylan's husky, nasal voice, which mumbles its way through some of the lyrics, some elements of the choruses could be discerned, making it possible to identify old classics such as – in addition to the aforementioned – "Desolation Row" or "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Dylan was careful to bring the songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways to life, with arrangements that bring transformations to the pieces, without distorting them. Most of the time, Dylan stood behind his piano, but at times he stepped away from it, performing short solo sections in these moments, which he seemed to relish.

The frankly bluesy approaches of "False Prophet" and "Crossing The Rubicon" were contrasted with ballad-like tracks: "Black Rider," with its arpeggios intermingled with guitars, one acoustic and the other finely electric, which trends toward a Tex-Mex style; "My Own Version of You," with its pronounced swaying notes; "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" and, above all, "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You," which he leads expressively, lengthening his diction with curving lyrics. The keen rendition was a touching moment, and it earned him cheers – to which Dylan murmured: "Thank you."