Sheryl Crow’s breakthrough single All I Wanna Do coaxed lapsed record-buyers back into Woolworth’s in late 1994, baiting the hook with sweet pedal steel and appealingly f fuzzy bar-room ramblings.
In the two decades since, there have been ups and downs for the Missouri-born singer-songwriter – a consistent run of radio-friendly hits, two armfuls of Grammys, a five-month engagement to disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong and two major health scares – but Crow has endured. For someone who launched their career with an ode to daytime drinking, she doesn’t seem particularly interested in wallowing.
Her current, ninth album, Feels Like Home, has been marketed as Crow’s first proper country record, and on the first night of a short UK tour, her six-strong backing band certainly look the part, resembling a beanpole version of the Flying Burrito Brothers. But this is hardly a stripped-back reinvention.
The heightened heartbreak of Callin’ Me When I’m Lonely would be a good fit for the Nashville TV show, while the muscular riff from take-charge anthem Shotgun could plausibly be sampled by Kid Rock. This is country in its glossiest, most overwhelming register – songs to which you submit, rather than swoon.
Crow herself seems energised and focused, able to command the spotlight and conduct audience singalongs during All I Wanna Do and Can’t Cry Anymore, but also capable of melting into the backline of her band to add piano to an extended outro for My Favourite Mistake. There are heartfelt tributes to long-standing fans and her family, but Crow never strays too far off-message. (She follows up an amusing anecdote about Glasgow kisses with: “Anyway, here’s a song from the movie Cars.”)
There’s barely a lull in a crammed two-hour show, a reminder of the depth of Crow’s back catalogue and her knack with a rootsy hook. There are covers, too: her version of Cat Stevens’s The First Cut is the Deepest, a song that helped buoy sales of her first greatest hits collection,, is rapturously received, and she encores with a relatively unrestrained rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll.
Overall, it’s a carefully calibrated performance, one that earns Crow a standing ovation. But it also feels like a ride on the bonnet of a gleaming juggernaut when there might be more interesting things going on under the hood.
At Sage, Gateshead (0191-443 4661) tonight and Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham (0115-989 5555) 29 Oct, then touring. http://www.sherylcrow.com/tour
