KCRW was presenting a series of free concerts of country music, ‘Country in the city’, in conjunction with the Annenberg exhibition ‘Country: Portraits of an American Sound’, and on Saturday night, Nikki Lane was opening for the iconic Wynona Judd.
Nikki Lane was a sexy surprise, she had that Katy-Perry-face turned country and some swagger to sell. Opening for bigger-than-life Wynnona Judd has to be a tough task for any country artist, but Nikki was showing some strong assurance and confidence herself. Should I say right away that her last album ‘All or Nothin’’ was produced by the Black Keys’ s Dan Auerbach? Anyway, is there anyone in Nashville he doesn’t produce…
Backed up by a full band with pedal steel, she had some of this expected twang in her music, but I would say she had two kinds of songs, the soft ballads she was singing with a strong and fierce voice – but which were sounding like many others I had heard before and not necessarily revealing Auerbach’s touch – and the bold ones with more violence and tough action, with a whipped rhythm and a Tarantino-western-badass style… needless to say, I loved these ones while I yawned a bit during the slow ones.
That said Nikki was a real character, wearing a long fringed skirt over a black short, she was commanding her all-men band while talking about her mother or failed marriage with twang in her voice and some real attitude, and I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about her real life or her songs… ‘This is a song about being a bit elevated’ she said before a tune with a fast tempo, bringing a spaghetti western ambiance and some Tex-Mex texture, shortly after she was aggressively ululating during a great new song, ‘700 000 rednecks’.
Ex-boyfriends, ex husbands, may be I didn’t hear her correctly but she was talking a lot about men, and not in a tender way, so I totally take my Katy Perry comparison back, she was bold and aggressive with lyrics like ‘It’s always the right time to do the wrong thing’.
She may well be the indie country future star, or at least the country woman of the moment, navigating between old-fashioned country songs and more innovative ones, but one thing is sure she didn’t seem to feel the stereotyped type crying on your shoulder about a boyfriend, she was rather the type to crucify this boyfriend with a stylish coolness.
More pictures of the show here.
