Brandi Carlile looks and sounds right at home on Paramount stage

Brandi Carlile looks and sounds right at home on Paramount stage

A review of Maple Valley native Brandi Carlile's Oct. 24 concert at Seattle's Paramount Theatre. The singer-songwriter showed command and confidence, writes reviewer Hugo Kugiya.

A good measure of a musician's command and confidence is her ability to perform solo, without the protection of a band.

That moment of truth came near the very end of Brandi Carlile's concert Saturday night at the Paramount Theatre, when she took the stool and the spotlight alone in her bare feet to perform "That Year," a ballad from her third and latest album, "Give up the Ghost."

She called it the "saddest song," as she picked up the "littlest guitar up here," easily filling the sold-out auditorium with a voice that needs little adornment, strumming gently to keep time and filling the turns between phrases with precious licks.

As with most of her songs, "That Year," is full of melancholy and a wistfulness that belies her relative youth. Not yet 30, and with only three albums, the promise of what is yet to come is what is most compelling about listening to her perform. Carlile might not have invented a new genre, but by uniquely blending several (folk, country, rock, blues, roots), she gets the most out of each.

She has been compared to many singer-songwriters like Sheryl Crow, Shawn Colvin and Bonnie Raitt, but many of her peers simply don't have Carlile's voice: her signature ability to wail, growl and scream a melody. Her material typically covers more ground; In that respect, she is a musician more like John Hiatt or even James Taylor, for whom she has opened. The singers she considers her influences, Freddie Mercury, Patsy Cline, K.D. Lang, Johnny Cash, are all there, in parts and pieces, in her voice, which was in surefire form Saturday night.

The Paramount concert was her last in a nearly two-month tour, and a homecoming for the 28-year-old who grew up in Maple Valley, at the foot of Mount Rainier. The audience was largely partisan, loaded, Carlile said, with friends and relatives and people she grew up with. Appropriately, she brought her sister Tiffany onto the stage to sing "Calling All Angels."

"It's so fun to be home you guys," she said during the show.

During the early 00's, she played a regular Sunday gig at the Paragon on Queen Anne. The rest of the week, she played in an assortment of local bars and restaurants, eventually graduating to larger rooms like the Showbox and the Triple Door. Her Paramount show was her second in the place as a headliner, a privilege she often dreamed of as an unknown singer, she said.

As a way of paying tribute to the auditorium's acoustics, she and her band played an unplugged version of "Dying Day," which the band also earlier played with instruments amplified. Later, she got the audience to sing three-part harmony for the song "Turpentine."

The newest addition to the band, drummer Allison Miller, stole the stage, playing with the authority of someone who has been with the group for years. The New York-based drummer is well-known on the avant-garde jazz scene and has played with the likes of pop stars such as Ani DiFranco and Natalie Merchant. The rest of the group (Josh Neumann on cello and piano, and twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth on guitar and bass respectively) have been with Carlile since her early days.

Her comfort with the audience came through in the telling of personal anecdotes, one about crossing the Canadian border on a fishing trip with her brother and father, another about meeting her idol Elton John, who recorded the track "Caroline" with Carlile on her new album.

Late in the show, she sang two covers of Johnny Cash songs, "Jackson," and "Folsom Prison Blues," two songs that perfectly suited her vocal style. She also took to the piano for a rendition of the Beatles' "Let It Be," which sounded underwhelming by comparison. The audience beseeched her to play "Hallelujah," a request she never obliged.


By Hugo Kugiya; Special to The Seattle Times
Special to The Seattle Times


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