Six months after Trixie Whitley looked around Rockwoods on Allen Street and thanked so many friends and family for coming out to hear her, Trixie sure didn't know everybody at a sold out Le Poisson Rouge Thursday night in what amounted to a coming out party for the phenomenal blues singer with a husky growl. With her first album, Fourth Corner, released two days earlier, getting a very positive review from venerated New York Times Senior Critic Jon Pareles, and the buzz surrounding the 25 year old woman in the dead of winter getting louder and louder, Trixie came here to move her career to the next level. By the end of the night she had graduated from LPR to City Winery and who knows where next.
"I've been waiting to record this album since I was 12 years old", Trixie claimed during her expertly crafted 75 minute, a ride though the new album, plus non lp b side "Like Ivy" and show closer self-portrait "Strong Blood". But the set sputters open, "Pieces" acoustic beauty, "Silent Rebel Pt 1"'s testifying Patti Smith heat and especially "Never Enough" -a hand clapping, smart sweet arrangement on the record, seem a little resistant to the moment -a little too professional. And this despite Trixie being very good on stage: her patter, while missing all the self-revelation of her Rockwood gig, mixed a sweet deprecation with a sure command. Trixie blew out her voice in the morning during rehearsals, and also claimed to be tired. I'm guessing she was worried her voice would go even deeper and held back a little at first.
And then, what should have turned the set on its head got snaffled by a tech problem. "Gradual Return" is not just the most straightforward song on the album, it is an immediate crowd favorite and if not a vocal tour de force the way "Breathe You In My Dreams" would prove to be, blew the audience away for the first time last night. Trixie gets all of the lick, you just know she knows what is on the hand, and you could see drummer Kowalski relax into the jam. The next song , a complete stand out on Live At Rock EP, "Irene" was positioned perfectly,. I am sure Trixie will have these two songs in this order at her fingertips when ever she wants to grab an audience. Unfortunately, there was a tech glitch as she switched guitars and the set stalled on her.
This isn't the difference between good and bad but great and greater. I would love to see her again in six weeks or so and see if a tour loosens things up a little. Trixie is such a great singer, her voice exudes a depth of emotion charged strange emotional blood simple desire and deliverance, she would probably find it difficult to suck. Plus, blood, again, she is the late great guitarist Chris Whitley's daughter, and has been around music all her life, Trixie is an Outlier, but still the set isn't quite igniting. She isn't pushing it into overdrive.
Or rather hadn't so far.
Maybe 50 minutes in the set catches fire. Her performances on "Need Your Love" is a soaring, sweeping, barrelling showstopper and the audience can hardly control their excitement. This is what they'd been lead to believe, and it answered her question as to why the place had been quiet: it was the difference between admiration, we all admire her emotionalism and also her lack of pretension, her ability to be deadly serious without taking herself deadly serious, and love. You could see Le Poisson Rouge fall in love with her.
As a lyricist, Trixie deals with congealed love songs which lead her to romantic truisms in the chorus made flesh through her improvised wails and whinges till the audience is on its knees The last song of the set proper brought us there, it did what we want music to do. "Breathe You In My Dreams" jumped over its producerly recorded arrangement and became a testament for the way she sees love: the fighting and the loss, the deepening of despair.
Trixie went to the piano for the last song of the night only to be told it was too late, there wasn't enough time for another song. She wasn't having any of it. "I have to sing this song, it is for my father" she said. And Trixie did what she does with "Strong Blood" and more, a testament to herself and her roots, a deeply felt look backwards and forwards and a gorgeous harsh rumble of a voice. A star turn deep in her blood.
Grade: A-