At least it’s hard to imagine how many Ever Trumpers listen to “Armor,” hear lines like “Only the little boys tell you they’re a big man… Strength means blessed with an enemy,” and think it’s actually the prevailing Pennsylvania Avenue values she’s extolling.
And looking back, it was a crazy time, it was volatile - and I’m just glad that everything’s better now.” Sarcasm will get her everywhere with this presumably progressive a fan base. It’s been fun! Having a great time in life it’s going good. “I started writing this record after the election,” she declared. With T Bone Burnett egging her on as producer, she’s bested herself in a collection that has her playing wounded lovebird and wisened pop shaman in equal measure, with a topical undercurrent of just what a mess we’re all in. Having “Amidst the Chaos” be the main course, with its substance and sustenance, is highly justifiable. As a former waitress - something she thought bore mentioning as she was later introducing a suite of songs from, yes, “Waitress” - Bareilles has a pretty good idea of what to serve up, and in what order. But by moving her former signature tune “Love Song” up from deep into the show in the sixth position, it’s not as if she’s forestalling more familiar pleasures. That might come off as a challenge to the audience if Bareilles’ material wasn’t so hooky and emotionally available that it sinks in effectively on first listen, which it undoubtedly was for some of the 17,000 in the house.
“I wanna see you be brave” is her anthemic catchphrase, and it also applies to the composition of her setlist, maybe, with half the 22-song show taken from the new album, including the show’s first five songs and final encore number. “To be honest, I heard some shit go down in the middle of the song, but I was afraid I was gonna forget the words so I didn’t stop.” She asked the newly betrothed pair to wave their smartphone lights in the air while everyone else kept theirs down. “What’s happening? Did somebody get engaged?” she asked afterward. By the time she got to her most lilting pop song, “I Choose You,” a few numbers in, a public marriage proposal was happening up in the nosebleed section, sending an initially baffling cheer down from on high. Having actually fallen in love in recent years, Bareilles has some more upfront love songs, now, in an arsenal that was formerly bigger on classic breakup material. Following an introductory tease of “Orpheus (Prologue),” with its hint of the heat of the Greek underworld, Bareilles quickly proceeded right into “Fire,” which has the singer leaving a sparkless relationship she’s settled for, holding out for something that merits at least as much passion as she’s putting into her ridiculously melodic but also nearly percussive piano playing. She seemed determined to bring the heat from the moment she appeared on stage, looking like the embodiment of a fire emoticon, or at least a very bright autumn leaf, in her flaming dress.
Bareilles is addressing it covertly in some new songs, more overtly in others, like “Armor.” (“I was profoundly changed” by the 2017 women’s march, she said in prefacing the tune, and by “what it means to dissemble and reanalyze some things that have always been social constructs but don’t have to be. To be alive at a time when we get to make these choices consciously is super f-ing important to me, and I am so proud to be a feminist.”) “I’m happy for your child.” A lot has happened in her absence, like a political upheaval that just about counts as a big chill, itself. My kid’s grown, my kid’s in kindergarten now.'” She paused in this mostly imaginary conversation. “I have not toured in almost six years,” she announced, before deferring to a response from the Bowl’s pool seating area.
0 kommentar(er)
