The was a sea of women on Monday night with the female to male ratio easily topping 7:1 and every inch of open space filled with a body. drew loud cheers as she entered the stage with a rock-texture design that seemed befitting of a much larger venue. She connected with the audience immediately by thanking them for selling “the fuck” out of the place.
The crowd sang along as she opened the set with “Vegas” from her “Little Voice” album and then followed up with “Uncharted” off her most recent record. Clearly the audience was there to hear more than just Bareilles’ smash radio hit “Love Song,” which she surprisingly played early in the set. They even gleefully shouted out the chorus lines when Bareilles offered a piano rendition of Cee-Lo Green’s “Fuck You.”
Bareilles played a predominantly upbeat set which rotated between her major label debut, “Little Voice,” and her recently released, “Kaleidoscope Heart.” While the majority of the songs sounded exceedingly similar and didn’t do much to showcase her tremendous, soulful voice, her genuinely humorous banter, affinity for casual swearing and love of whiskey made a strong case that she is far more intelligent and saccharine than the simple songs she writes.
This sentiment could not be more apparent than when she slowed things down near the end of her set and played “Fairy Tale,” “Gravity” and “Kaleidoscope Heart” alone on stage, as these songs truly showcased Bareilles’ unwavering voice. Bareilles even went as far as introducing “Love Song” by stating, “I wrote this song to get on a good label.”
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Greg Stieber is a Denver freelance writer and regular contributor to Reverb.
Lara Wenzel is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb.
