At age 48, k.d. lang is at the top of her game — an obvious fact from her show at the Buell Theatre on Saturday night.
Good singers just get better and better, until they don’t. But that leaves a moment in time when they have all the benefit of experience and the finest ability to make use of it. It’s the period when they are at their absolute best.
At 48, it’s fair to assume that may be singing through the most interesting decade of her career. Nothing is lost in her capacity to control her phrasing, to belt out those big and endless notes that made her famous, to keep the old material fresh with subtle twists and turns.
And everything is gained in what she has learned as a performer. When to throw it out there and when to bring it down, which material to sing live, the ability to make the audience as comfortable in their seats as she appears to be on stage.
It was all on display Saturday night at the Buell Theatre. Dressed in a boxy vest and tie, pin-striped trousers and bare feet, lang delivered a set that was short on the kind of showy, show-biz delivery that can turn her into a parody of herself and long on the kind of sophisticated sincerity that makes her smooth voice so irresistible.
Everything was in balance. There was little overselling of the new songs from her recent album “Watershed,” even though the tour is meant to support it. Her take on its less-familiar titles like “Sunday,” “Once in a While,” and “Thread” was cool and patient, honoring the understated strengths that lay in the songs’ catchy melodies and clever lyrics.
And there was no underselling of those moments when the material calls for lang to let it rip as only she can. lang got loud for Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It’s the go-for-it moment many in the audience paid for.
The only thing off-kilter was the sound mix. The finer points of the back up musicians’ good efforts were lost at times at the Buell. It was hard, for example, to hear the banjo on “Coming Home” and the instrument is crucial to the song’s success. The band, and itap a new set of musicians for lang, seemed right at home otherwise.
So did the audience, challenged with new material, comforted with samplings of the older jazz, pop and country tunes that have kept them coming back, wowed with a good share of larger-than-life vocals.
And so, finally, did lang, keeping the chatter to a minimum, flashing that little-boy smile. This really is her biggest moment, and she made the most of it.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is the Arts & Entertainment Editor at The Denver Post and a regular contributor to.
