Amanda Marshall's performance a hair-raising experience
By Norman Provencher, The Ottawa Citizen, May 18th 1997
When: May 16th
Where: National Arts Centre, Ottawa Ontario
In these times of ecological responsibility and what have you, every little bit of saved newsprint is a bonus.
Theoretically, we could save a whole bunch of paper at this point by simply noting: if there are any more powerful, and promising, pop singers out there, they're keeping themselves pretty well hidden.
Oh, for sure, there's work left to be done. For one thing, she's only 23 years old, for heaven's sake and, as a song interpreter rather than a singer/songwriter, she can only improve with a few more years of seasoning, both for her stagecraft and her interpretive skills.
For another, her career is still so young (she really only has one album of material out) that her shows are bound to seem a bit repetitive as she concentrates on trying to sell the singles.
But, she, be all that as it may, when the slinky woman with the big, big hair puts her foot to the floor, the results are most often hair-raising (hers as well as ours).
The lack of material was evident at Friday night's NAC show. Most of the set varied little from show's she's done in the area over the past year at Barrymore's and as an opening act for Tom Cochrane.
The big difference, however, is that Marshall - who has been on a stadium tour with John Mellencamp for the past 4 months or so - continues to grow artistically, and the songs had a freshness to them a lesser singer might not have been able to supply.
The set opened with a strange pastiche of sound clips from the sixties, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s "free at last" proclamation. (Marshall would have been something like minus-11 years old when the speech was given).
As the clips died down, her crack five-piece band set up a drowning intro and she tore out from the wings in a white pant suit that looks better on her than the one Celine Dion wears, and ripped into her hit Fall From Grace.
This frenzied approach set the tone for the rest of the evening, as she bounced, hopped and flailed her way through now familiar radio fare, such as Dark Horse, Let It Rain (with the now-obligatory I Can't Stand The Rain intro), Birmingham and Beautiful Goodbye.
While Marshall's voice has most often been compared to that of Janis Joplin's (in fact, Marshall has a better
technical voice, where Joplin was much more dramatic and emotive), her stage presence, all tics and twitches and flailing hands, was always compared to that of Joe Cocker. And, oddly perhaps, her newfound experience may be causing her to control herself a lot more. For much of the set Friday night, she kept her right arm, which is normally flying around, jammed up tight behind her back, making her look a little like an amputee.
But, really,this is all probably nitpicking. Certainly, none of the little problems seemed to be noticed by the sold-out NAC crowd, which ranged in age from very early teens to respectable adulthood. The huge majority of the paying customers were perfectly happy to bask in the power of Marshall's voice, which is probably as it should be.