[FONT="]There was a long snaking line to get in to Underwood’s show, which was advertised as being sold out. But even after everybody got in, there were plenty of empty seats, surely more than Underwood is accustomed to seeing.[/FONT][FONT="]Not that the less than full house affected the 100 minute show. Underwood isn’t much for quiet moments or subtlety, but she’s a seasoned performer with a big voice and a confident stage presence.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Thirteen years after her
Idol victory, Underwood still projects the self-styled “All-American Girl” image she mapped out for herself on her 2008 hit of that same name. She’s one of the extremely few female artists who get regular play on bro heavy country radio playlists, and her spirited set had its share of songs that overtly signified an adherence to Christian beliefs, including “Jesus Take the Wheel” and the baptism conversion saga “Something in the Water.”[/FONT]
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[FONT="]But along with those testimonies of faith, Underwood also has a taste for melodramatic struggle and strife. All sorts of unsavory, untrustworthy dudes appear in her songs, most of which she co-writes.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The best of the bunch on Friday was the tire-slashing headlight-smashing intensely satisfying revenge song “Before He Cheats.” But there was also an abusive husband who gots his just reward in “Church Bells,” an unhappy relationship that needs to end in “Undo It,” and a good for nothing “Cowboy Casanova,” who is “like a disease.”[/FONT]
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The band includes a banjo, fiddle and dobro, and you can hear the Oklahoma in Underwood’s voice. But while retaining a mainstream country identity, Underwood really operates as a full throated rock stylist, with a big back beat sound that can recall ‘70s country rockers like Marshall Tucker, a vocal delivery that leans toward Janis Joplin and a predilection for story songs that suggests a taste for Bobbie Gentry.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Underwood has a tendency towards the too slick, but she’s grown steadily as an artist. She caught the audience by surprise by playing a wailing harmonica solo on “Choctaw County Affair” and announced that she’s making her debut as a producer of her own music with
Cry Pretty, her new album due in September.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The Celine Dion-worthy power ballad title song from the forthcoming worked well enough as an over- the-top anthem of feminist solidarity. But “The Champion,” which made it debut in the telecast before the
Eagles Super Bowl victory in February, is an awkwardly over-determined attempt to engineer a music-and-sports crossover product, not aided by a guest rap from Ludacris. Still, Underwood declaration that she’s “a fighter like Rocky … knock me down, I get up again” was well suited for a comeback weekend in Atlantic City, when the struggling resort is attempting to get up off the canvas, one more time.[/FONT]
