CONCERT REVIEW
Shawn Colvin at National Music Center
by Seth Rogovoy(LENOX, Mass., July 27, 1997) -- Singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin kicked off the National Music Foundation's summer concert series at the Berkshire Performing Arts Theatre on Saturday night. In her third appearance at the venue, Colvin was at the peak of her powers, performing songs from all aspects of her career with vigor, enthusiasm and seemingly effortless ease belying their complexity and sophistication.
In a set marred only by technical glitches -- including wayward lighting cues and a p.a. system that threatened to self-destruct by the end of the show -- Colvin was a disarmingly informal presence, in stark contrast to the emotional turmoil embedded in most of her songs.
While favoring material from her latest album, last year's "A Few Small Repairs," Colvin also played older songs, exposing the surprising depth and richness of a song catalog that draws on only three albums of original material -- 1994's "Cover Girl" featured songs by other writers.
Backed by bassist Larry Klein and guitarist Steuart Smith, Colvin emphasized the tension and dynamics inherent in her material -- that is, when Klein's over-amped bass wasn't riding roughshod over the entire mix.
She began "Get Out of This House" with some Neil Young-like harmonica licks, and rode the venomous folk-rock song through its litany of putdowns to its final insult. "The Facts About Jimmy" followed, a dark, quiet tune that more calmly and reasonably explicated the complaints about the ex-lover of the previous tune. She then turned tender with "You and the Mona Lisa," a love song dedicated to her niece, which she introduced with an uncanny imitation of Lyle Lovett.
Aspiring songwriters would do well to study how artfully and shamelessly Colvin embeds hooks -- catchy melodic phrases, chord changes, modulations -- resonant of or appropriated from classic R&B and pop tunes of the '60s and '70s into every corner of her compositions.
Sometimes she acknowledges the debt, as she did with "Wichita Skyline," adding a phrase from "Wichita Lineman" to the tune. Other times she leaves it to listeners to make the connection, as with "I Want It Back," a new song that ironically borrows the chord structure of the Eagle's "Best of My Love."
In either case, the hooks open up her songs, making them instantly accessible to listeners while supporting her confessional poetry and her achingly vulnerable vocals.
Opener Duncan Sheik played a warm set of his melancholy, minor-key pop, combining a Morrissey-like weariness with '70s-style soft-rock from the Bread, Badfinger and America school. While his songs were heavy on adolescent angst, they were saved from sinking into solipsism by the beauty of their melodies, Sheik's gummy, elastically expressive vocals and his Colvin-like penchant for burying hooks and riffs in every available crevice of a tune. His program set a dark mood, broken only once midway through by an errant cue that mistakenly brought up the house lights.
[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 28, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.
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