Live: Alicia Keys at the Honda Center
IN THE film clip that introduced Alicia Keys' concert at the Honda Centre in Anaheim on Billy Sunday, a fiery gospel choir raised the church cap and a thomas Young Alicia stepped from her church bench and prepared to name her way in the world. The sermonizer, played by Cedric the Entertainer, sent her forth, with or so mysterious advice about seeking "the Star Maker."
Like the concert's production numbers game, this form of duplicate baggage is just now a misdirection from Keys' unique perfume. The segments when she simply panax quinquefolius and played pianoforte, whether solely or with her band slow her, were the real heart of the concert, both musically and emotionally.
Merely in mainstream pop, fans look a show up with a capital S, and even having the second-biggest album of the year, as Keys does with "As I Am," ostensibly doesn't give you a fleet.
The staging and choreography were evenhandedly modest and restrained by contemporary standards, and about of the more active sections, especially the energetic accept on Baby Cham's "Ghetto Story," had around charm. Overall, though, Keys' involvement seemed dutiful, if not quite mechanical.
Non that she was a stick-in-the-mud. Being a diva (even if a medium, caring form of prima donna), she's not averse to the personal effects of a k scale and a little showiness. And by presenting herself as an idealized alternate for everyone who's chased a dream or been dumped by a lover, she fulfilled that classic prima donna function. She power receive a goddess-like beauty and a privileged sprightliness, simply the connexion between singer and attender is grounded in shared experience.
Keys, world Health Organization was also scheduled to spiel Staples Center tonight, alluded to that moral force early in the show when she rundle around her desire to write "meaningful" music. (And if there's a little lordliness in her separating herself from other, presumptively to a lesser extent meaningful artists, well, that's a prima donna thing excessively.)
Keys is a fundamentally different engender from coeval R&B's virtuosic singers and athletic, all-around entertainers. More attuned to parallel textures and ringing than digital gratification, she's an old fashioned singer-songwriter out to slyness a personal, organic sort of program line, and every metre the doors at the back of the stagecoach slid open William Ashley Sunday and her grand piano emerged in a sully of stage fog, you knew a second was coming.
The bluesy "How Come You Don't Call Me," the intense "Prelude to a Kiss" (its "sometimes we completely need an angel" sentiment linked to a plea for attention to the needy in Africa), the urgent "Like You'll Ne'er See Me Again" and "Diary" (a stormy twosome with a backup vocaliser) combined soulful intimacy and arena-size force.
"Fallin' " showcased a dramatic refinement of blues, and her ubiquitous recent epoch hit "No 1" had a hunt of Bob Marley in its blending of idealism and black bile. Together, these formed a career-spanning aspect that reminded everyone wherefore she's one of the most systematically popular and acclaimed artists of this decennium.
These peaks too made the show's monetary standard routines appear all the to a greater extent anonymous. If Keys genuinely wants to do something special, she should intent a show around that core group fabric and have it to smaller rooms where it could get a nuanced sound and full gist. Now that would be meaningful.
Earlier Keys took over the evening, rising star Ne-Yo had rocked the house jolly impressively in his second-billed pip. The singer-writer-producer, wHO won a Grammy for best R&B record album this year, didn't play it low-key, striking the stage with a flashy, white-suited nine-piece band and a few chorus girl dancers (no surprise that he's from Las Vegas).
Betwixt the untier, the Euro-disco-flavored fresh bingle "Closer," and the closing curtain of his big hit "Because of You," he flashed considerable charm, or so sharp saltation moves and a supple, feathery voice.
richard.cromelin @latimes.com
