Saturday 2 September 2006

Carey hits the notes, but concert needs a tuneup

And lo, The Voice did deign to make an appearance, finally, at the Pepsi Arena on Friday night, an hour after the opening act had finished. And lo, The Voice was good. At times, The Voice was great - soaring, passionate, magnificent in its range and acrobatics.

Mariah Carey still has a marvelous instrument. And if she's never met a note that she didn't want to filigree or use as a multi-octave launching pad, well, she does it better than anyone. You can't hold the flourishes against her by now. (Her negative influence on all those "American Idol" auditionees is a bone to pick another time.)

At the Pepsi, as part of her "The Adventures of Mimi: The Voice, the Hits, the Tour" tour, Carey stormed through "Fly Like a Bird", which spent almost two months at the top of the R&B charts. She caressed the ballad "My Heart", from her smash-selling "Butterfly" album. "Fantasy", done from a midfloor secondary stage as a duet with a videoscreen version of Ol' Dirty Bastard, funked long and hard. And her duet on the Jackson 5 tune "I'll Be There", sung with Trey Lorenz, with whom she recorded it, was loose and lovely. (Lorenz got a few moments of his own, too, including a cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" that rightly riled up the arena.)

But, really, between the unnecessary diva elements - putting on sunglasses is a costume change? - and the frequent waits, the concert entertained merely as much as it aggravated. Carey's breathiness seemed more frequent and annoying than her bravura vocal work, especially in songs like "Shake It Off". Worse, the drippy insipidities of her lyrics proved wearing throughout.

Finally, you'd think that Carey, at 36, more than a decade and a half into her career, would be better at stage patter than this effort at a song introduction: "Um, so, yeah - I love you back. And I'm not just saying that, too. What I wanted to tell you is that I'm going to do a song - well, how do I tell the story different? Well, um, anyway, here goes."

Jamaican dancehall sensation Sean Paul, accompanied by seven musicians, four singers and his own undulant pelvis, opened the show with 45 minutes of infectious, head-nodding reggae rhythms. He could have done with fewer exhortations that "the lay-deez" in the crowd should "make some noyyyy-ze", but his feel-good grooves more than compensated. And his sentiments seemed heartfelt, if crude, when he said, "Everybody who wants peace, make some (freakin') noise!" Why one of the backup singers did a strip routine before standing on her head is anybody's guess.

(Times Union)



COMMENTS
There are not yet comments to this article.

Only registrated members can post a comment.
© MCArchives 1998-2024 (26 years!)
NEWS
MESSAGEBOARD