Singer, songwriter shows potential on uptempo songs
Valerie June hears voices. The Memphis singer talked about it Thursday night from stage during an hour-long set in the Riffe Center’s Speaker Jo Ann Davidson Theatre.
She insisted that those voices dictated one of her songs in full one morning, and that the words lived inside her head until she was able to finish the song with music that night.
It was not so surprising a confession, coming from a songwriter whose stage patter is freely associative and whose lyrics frequently are delivered mantra-like over a hypnotic drone based in West African and North Mississippi blues.
As a musical package on record, especially on her breakthrough third album, “Pushin’ Against a Stone,” that combination is visceral, hypnotic and smoldering with energy.
Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, who co-produced and added guitar, had everything to do with the album’s success.
Thursday night, in front of her road band, June’s freeform presentation and fitful soul vocals seemed to lack an active partner, one that could pack her performance into a presentation as irrepressible as that album.
The group, which sported plenty of chops for the job, sounded lazy and disconnected. Not all of it was the sound mix, which failed to match the ensemble to the singer’s piercing but appealing soul, gospel and folk-style vocal.
June’s previous Columbus show benefited from its small-club ambiance (at the A&R Music Bar) and morecompact audience than Thursday’s half-full theater.
When the blend all came together, though, in the uptempo boogie numbers, the show’s potential was realized.
With her dancing and energetic guitar playing, June set “Shakedown,” from the newest release “The Order Of Time,” on fire; “Pushin’s” “Workin’ Woman Blues” let a classic song, full of hardheaded commitment, work its magic when it closed the set proper.
Maryland duo The War and Treaty opened the show with a short, moving set delivered with just one keyboard and two vocals.
Songs of love and trial were cast in familiar but freshsounding gospel and pop styles.