Photo credit: Mark Goodman
More than 20 patrons lined up in the brisk, autumnal dark Thursday night before Shank Hall's door was opened for Ana Popovic’s return to the Farwell Avenue club. Considering how the singer/guitarist has topped Billboard's blues albums chart a couple times and has netted a mantle full of trophies since her solo debut at the turn of the century, that kind of anticipation could be expected.
Backed by a three-piece band, Popvoic demonstrated both her instrumental and vocal prowess. She kept the nearly full house enraptured when she assayed her instrumental Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute, "Navajo Moon," and her numerous, often lengthy solos. The slink and wail of her hearty alto, with some of the Serbian accent from her Belgrade upbringing, befit the Albert King, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix remakes in her set. Her most radical reinterpretation of the night had to be her handling of Robert Palmer's late ’70s pop breakthrough, "Every Kind Of People," wherein she supplanted the original's steel drum calypso flavor with some of the more yearning tones to come from the slightly beat up, solid-bodied axe she favored much of the night.
She arguably sang even stronger on often funk-infused originals such as "Can You Stand The Heat" and "Object Of Obsession," one of the few songs for which she has made a proper music video. Were it ever Popovic's prerogative to make a go for adult R&B acceptance—as an Eastern European Teena Marie/Janis Joplin hybrid, perhaps—she would be a serious contender.
Assuming she would like to compete in that field, Popovic may want to be more of a spotlight-hugging diva. Presently, she's a generous bandleader, though. The interplay she allowed between her nigh frantic Parisian drummer and a Chicagoan bassist whose overhanded plucks and slaps skirted around the edges of jazz abstraction; each player was given considerable solo space, too. Only her keyboardist, who ranged from the nimblest of piano tinkling to heady Hammond B3 organ tones from the same nearly toy-looking instrument, came off underrepresented among her ensemble.
|
|
Much as Popovic has a way with modern electric blues, she can cleverly avoid encores, too. Giving the audience the impression that the next song was going to be their last for three or four tunes running kept her throng attentive and pretty well sated by the time the house lights went on.
