POP MUSIC REVIEW : McKee Segues From Arena to McCabe’s

You can take the girl out of the arena but you can’t take the arena out of the girl. That was the message delivered Friday night at McCabe’s when Maria McKee showed off both the commanding presence and chilling voice that once made her queen of L.A.’s country-punk scene and the overwrought, foot-stomping histrionics that quickly made her once-spunky club band, Lone Justice, almost unlistenable.

McKee, who played McCabe’s on Sunday also, showed up at the folk club with a synthesizer player and a bit of arena-rock echo--but at the same time she proved that she can still be a restrained, subtle singer. A version of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” was stunning; so were a few of her own new songs, the best of which sound as if they come directly from the heart of a young woman experiencing heartbreak and rejection for the first time.

Charming but clearly uneasy in an unfamiliar environment, McKee good-naturedly whined, “I still feel like I’m in a rock ‘n’ roll band” at one point. But as she prepares to make her first solo album, the lesson of her weekend shows is that she has what it takes to make a great record--if she forgets about trying to be a rocker.