POP MUSIC REVIEW : ROYAL TWIRL FROM NICKS

The freeway signs said Costa Mesa, but the Pacific Amphitheatre was in another world entirely Sunday night: Stevieland.

Stevie Nicks’ world is a magical faerie kingdom populated by starry-eyed adolescent dreamers, and ruled over by the Good Witch of the South (Southern California, that is), a benevolent if daffy monarch who spends her time twirling in circles and flailing her scarfs.

She speaks to her subjects through obviously heartfelt but often confusing stabs at Poetic Significance--but if those wandering musings on true love and crystal visions are hardly profound, they do move a great deal of her audience profoundly. That makes it hard for grumps who don’t quite get it to begrudge her fans their time in Stevieland.

Before Nicks sang a single note she spun around six times and did a little of that pouty march step she uses in all her videos, and predictably enough she spent half the night either changing capes and veils or twirling and flailing.

When she got to work, however, Nicks was a more convincing rock ‘n’ roller than in the past, though her always throaty voice was often hoarse and bleating. Her show’s emphasis has shifted from the songs that sound like “Rhiannon” (mystical, meandering ballads with big finales) to the songs that sound like “Edge of Seventeen” (pulsing rock songs built around chants, and punchy enough to give the show a welcome shot of adrenaline).

The show was opened by Peter Frampton, a pleasant enough English guitarist and singer who’d rate little more than a mention if he hadn’t been the Biggest Rock Star in the Universe 10 years ago. The journeyman is still as agreeable, inoffensive and ordinary as ever.

Nicks and Frampton return for a Forum concert July 18.