Tom JonesPalmerstown House Estate, Naas★★★★☆At 86, Tom Jones can no longer be considered rock’s foremost sex bomb – but there are still plenty of fireworks as the veteran Welshman delivers a rollicking set at Palmerstown House Estate in Naas.Some singers spend their later years fighting the passage of time. Others choose to roll with it. Silver-haired and wispily bearded, the Pontypridd pop plutocrat has sensibly chosen the latter option. Rather than waggle his tongue at old age, Mick Jagger-style, his performance under the awnings of this marquee in north Kildare is draped in the deep hues of autumn.It helps that his voice is astonishingly well-preserved. He sounds as spry and as roguish as when he was the toast of Vegas in the 1960s or during his 1990s rebirth as a middle-aged lothario gatecrashing Britpop with a cheeky wink and a baritone that could take the hinges off a barn door.If the evening has a theme, it is that old age comes for us all in the end – but this is no reason to stop shaking your hips or become a lesser version of yourself. He’s melancholic with all the trimmings as he begins with I’m Growing Old, a meditation on mortality written by jazz pianist Bobby Cole in 1966. Here it is given added lustre by Jones’s croon, which has now acquired the wisdom and ache of a bluesman who has seen it all.He still has an ear for a good song, too. His take on Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song upgrades the original’s droll ennui with lashings of Celtic impishness. He likewise brings an epic quality to The Waterboys’ This Is The Sea – Mike Scott’s luminescent rumination on personal betterment and letting go of the past.Jones’s saucier smashes have been given a cold shower and reimagined in a style more fitting to a gentleman of a certain age (he divides the show between sitting down and standing). That is most obvious on Sex Bomb, which he has reworked as a jazz-blues sizzle steeped in Delta blues sepia and which has a long-time fan down the front literally dancing with her Zimmer frame. ‘It helps that his voice is astonishingly well-preserved.’ Tom Jones at Palmerstown House, Co Kildare. Photograph: Conor Blaides He’s done something similar to Delilah, reborn as a Parisian cafe jazz stomper with lashings of accordion from his tightly-coiled band. It is a far cry from its 1968 murder ballad origins or its more recent incarnation as an anthem of Welsh rugby fans (before it was banned by the Welsh Rugby Union because of the lyric about the narrator killing his lover).Long over are the days when Jones had to dodge airborne underwear on stage. Rather than hysteria, the mood at this show is one of nostalgia, which reaches a graceful fever pitch during a beautifully ageless Green, Green Grass of Home.Still, it is telling he follows that moment up with a salvo of early rock’n’roll standards that allow him to unleash the full molten force of his voice. The sex bomb has calmed down, but he’s still an incendiary performer, ticking with wit and mischief.[ The lucrative but frustrating musical afterlife of The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Bob DylanOpens in new window ]