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Returning to the Paradise Rock Club last Saturday after the emergence of a new album, the bespectacled Ingrid Michaelson came, played the ukulele and conquered.
The set was largely dominated by music off her new album, "Everybody" (2009) but there was a healthy blend of older favorites thrown in the mix. Michaelson, clearly aware that every time she sings "The Hat" before a live audience she will not be alone on the chorus, decided to turn audience participation into a way to jazz up songs she's been repeating for years now. She taught the crowd quick dance moves to accompany specific lines and offered alternative, and often hilarious, styles in which to sing verses.
Halfway through one song the band vamped for about three minutes while Michaelson urged the audience to imagine they had been driving for eight hours and consuming lots of alcohol, and had to sing the upcoming line at the person holding the key to the bathroom. "And you really, really have to go," said the singer. "There is pee trickling down your leg. How are you going to sing this line?" It was a regular night of Stanislavski method acting.
Part of what makes Michaelson such a wonderful stage performer is the obvious closeness she shares with her band. Back when her budget was smaller and she didn't sell out concerts days after the tickets went on sale, Michaelson had to multi-track her own voice to harmonize. In her more recent work, however, Michaelson can play with harmonies, rounds or anything else she desires since she is supported by the two angelic voices of her guitar players, Allie Moss and Bess Rogers. This freedom is a blessing for listeners, as Michaelson's music writing talent lies in her acrobatic and interlocking harmonies.
One moment in which this new freedom was used particularly effectively was during her new song "Mountain and the Sea." Though the crowd was taught the chorus ahead of time and encouraged to participate, the usually enthusiastic audience opted to simply listen to the majority of the song -- presumably so that no one would drown out the tight and perfectly executed harmonies of the singers. The effect was almost one of watching an indie Andrews Sisters.
As with any of her live performances, Michaelson made it clear that she was there for not only the audience's pleasure, but for her own as well. She felt no shame in cracking inside jokes with her band on stage, or singing a parody of one of her own songs in an encore titled "Ode to Mexican Food," presumably written during one of the many long hours spent on the tour bus. Fortunately, Michaelson's deadpan and sarcastic brand of humor seems well suited to a young Boston audience. Concert-goers were cracking up after the indie songstress slipped in "that's what she said" between several tracks.
One highlight of the evening was a moment that Michaelson warned the audience was "going to be pretty f---ing cute." Gathering her four band members and her opening singer, Greg Holden, around one microphone, Michaelson divided her song "Maybe" up line by line, and each member jumped forward for their respective 15 seconds in the limelight. Michaelson made good on her promise -- watching the drummer and the bassist belt out the chorus with their arms around each other and with a seeming ambivalence about the accuracy of their notes was pretty f---ing cute.
With such a young population in Boston, it makes sense that a talented indie singer/songwriter would go over so well. Michaelson's new work shows no signs of decline, and hopefully the future will bring further musical exploration and more "f---ing cute" moments from this playful solo act.
