Review | Old Soul in the Middle Zone

Natalie Merchant, still one of the more unique and instantly identifiable of high-profile singer-songwriters, is more than the sum of her hits. Of this fact we were reminded when she settled into the Santa Barbara Bowl last week for her fifth appearance in this venue — offering a sumptuous survey of her songcraft from over the years. 

Coming five years after a dire health scare kept her from singing for many months and after COVID’s merciless clampdown, Merchant’s appearance had a triumphant air about it. Even so, as most veteran pop artists know, there are the radio-kissed hits that keep on giving and pulling in the crowds, and then — for those artists who keep their creative fires burning — there are deep cuts and new material in the margins.

After her tasteful band, a rhythm section plus string quartet, struck up the sound of the tune “Lulu,” Merchant came twirling on stage in her flowing black dress and bright red coat. At one point late in the song, the crowd seized on a silence to start clapping prematurely. Merchant chided them, saying, “No, there’s still one more verse. It goes to show how many of you bought that album. I did make albums after Tigerlily, you know,” she said, referring to her most commercially successful record today, circa 1995, following the end of her band 10,000 Maniacs.

By show’s end, many in the crowd were inspired to pony up the $50 for autographed vinyl copies of her album from last year, Keep Your Courage. From that song set, Merchant performed the alluring songs “Big Girls,” “Come On, Aphrodite,” and “Eye of the Storm,” which demonstrates the continuing vitality of her creative life and contributes to the overall sense of a large body of work. For several songs, Merchant called upon Abena Koomson-Davis as a soulful vocal foil.

Merchant is not one to just stand and deliver in performance. She brandishes a loose and personable style with stories, as she relayed with the saga of a previous West Coast tour being interrupted when she caught “the COVID.” A recurring theme this night was her surprise and dismay at the cold weather in California, which forced her to wear the big red coat supplied by her “pirate boyfriend.” Come encore time, a jokey shoutout of “Freebird” from the crowd sent her spontaneously surfing into Pop-Tart fragments, from Orleans’s “Dance with Me” and Kansas’s “Dust in the Wind,” before resuming her official set list, ending with “Kind & Generous” and the axiomatic “Life Is Sweet.” She’s game for program shifts on short notice.

Artfully melting pop, folk, and touches of jazz, Merchant makes music which seems fairly timeless. Even re-listening to her hits “Carnival” and “Wonder,” they sounded less like ’90s-era relics than ageless anthems. Thanks to that fashion-resistant quality and her tendency to think bigger picture, genre-wise, it was not at all jarring when she slipped into an a capella version of a 100-plus-year-old Irish tune, “Young Girl Cut Down in Her Prime.”  

At age 60 and nearly 30 years since the onset of the Tigerlily buzz, Merchant remains relevant and true.