POP MUSIC REVIEW : Amy Grant--Searching for a Style

Everybody knows that Amy Grant identifies with the Gospel Jesus. In her mostly enjoyable but fractured concert Saturday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, the country’s leading Christian pop singer also seemed to have a lot in common with the fictional Jesus of “The Last Temptation of Christ”--an uncertain, very human figure struggling to define an identity and articulate it to others.

Is Grant the splendid show-woman whose engaging humor, good nature and lively presence established an uncommon bond with her audience early in the two-hour concert? Or is she the less assured performer who allowed her personality to be obscured later on by second-rate, over-amplified rock material that she is ill-suited to sing? Was Grant the magician who had the full house swaying and singing together in luminous moments of community? Or was she the negligent star who disappeared for four songs in the middle of the show, letting her husband, Gary Chapman, front the band for a disruptive, continuity-killing segment?

Grant did have a good answer for one important contradiction--the one between her long-established identity as a Christian performer with evangelistic aims and her more recent aspirations to appeal to the pop mainstream. She avoided preaching between songs, offering instead folksy warmth and self-effacing humor. Grant let the lyrics of her explicitly Christian songs speak for themselves, and the only commandment she issued was: “Dance your brains out.” There was no obvious schism between Grant’s religious songs and her secular (but still spiritually informed) songs of love and self-evaluation.

Grant drew heavily from her current album, “Lead Me On,” which shows a new-found willingness to look at the more painful side of human experience, rather than focusing only on the rewards of faith. Still, there remains something superficial in Grant’s darker songs: While she has plenty of catchy hymns of praise and forceful anthems of optimistic faith, she has yet to probe deeply into the anguished, doubt-ridden side of spiritual life. For that, see masters like Van Morrison, Peter Townshend, Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson.

If Grant resolves her stylistic uncertainty (leaving the harder stuff to Stryper, one hopes) and continues the growth and broadened awareness evident on her latest album, she may yet deliver future concerts full of charm, interdenominational appeal, and maybe even amazing grace.