Fine Line Music Café, September 27, 2007
I've been to a few live shows in my day. I had never been to one put on by a former pop princess though, and I'm not used to entering a venue before 6:00 on a weeknight. But there were a couple of extenuating circumstances here: first, I am a
Mandy Moore devotee, and secondly I haven't yet seen a show at the
Fine Line that disappointed me. Luckily, the fan in me won out over reason, and I made it out to see the show.
The official support act for the Midwest spate of shows was
Ben Lee, a Twin Cities fave who will be headlining at the Varsity in mid-November. Equipped with only a tiny acoustic guitar and a keyboard player, he proceeded to wow the eclectic all-ages crowd with a mix of tunes from his new album
Ripe and standards from his back catalog. Specific winners in his set were the light, whimsical "American Television," the frank "Sex Without Love" and his biggest U.S. hit "Catch My Disease."
Mandy appeared on stage for her set shortly before 8:00 and jumped right into "Slummin' in Paradise," wasting no time in getting into the music:
.... and so the set continued. The short-by-my-standards 50-minute set was made up mostly of songs from her new album
Wild Hope, though she mixed in a couple of covers (the buzzed-about sendup of Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" which she recorded for
Coverage) and closed her set with the bubblegum anthem "Candy."
Overall, I was impressed with the show, though the forgettable Chris Stills could have easily been left off the bill, and while Mandy's set was short, the bonus of 45 minutes of Ben Lee made this show worth the price of admission.
B+Labels: local, music, personal, review
