Amanda Marshall gets her fans' fires burning
Smoke alarm can't quell singer's voice
Nick Lewis
Calgary Herald Friday, March 15, 2002
Amanda Marshall brought her considerable vocal talents to Mac Hall Thursday night
Review
Amanda Marshall with Jordy Birch at MacEwan Hall Thursday night.
Attendance: 1,700
Some idiot started smoking in the stairwell.
And as the fire alarm rang through MacEwan Hall before Amanda Marshall had sung a note, sending 1,700 coatless patrons out into the cold, the concert was delayed by more than half an hour.
When things finally got back on track, those frigid frowns did turn upside down. Out to see the 29-year-old on her tour for Everybody's Got a Story, her fans -- from pink hair to no hair, pants-too-low to pants-too-high -- seemed like they would've waited longer.
"The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire," Marshall joked before launching into Dizzy, and suddenly everything was all right.
Amanda's been hounded with the same backhanded compliment since Day 1 -- nice voice, shame she doesn't know how to use it. It says much about her material, which may be catchy but doesn't do much to stand out of the crop of Top 40 polished pop-rock. It's like watching Evander Holyfield fight with one arm behind his back -- able, but not up to potential.
While she's deflected those criticisms in the past, she's also done much to quieten them. And so detractors who previously found lyrics like "Somewhere there's a river looking for a stream/somewhere there's a dreamer looking for a dream" silly, now find new lyrics like "I like salsa with my pancakes, baby/ I like to vacuum when I'm in the nude" endearing.
More than the songwriting has changed. The wild-haired Juno winner has refurbished her image as well -- a new svelte bod with skintight apparel to accentuate it, all the more slender under that big hair.
She attacks her vocals with greater fervour in concert, so even middle-of-the-road rockers such as
I Believe come across as punchier and more emotional. At press time, because of delays, Marshall was just five songs into her set.
Opening act Jordy Birch came out in his refurbished Jarvis Cocker-image with just a guitar and a DJ, deftly tackling dance-rock songs from his new album, Funmachine. With the DJ-as-backing-band setup, Moola Moola, Hustlin' and El Camino Del Diablo sounded like their album originals.
Of course, most of this was lost on the chattering crowd, who seemed uninterested.
"Why would they think this would appeal to Amanda Marshall fans?" one man asked me.
Your guess is as good as mine.
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