POP MUSIC REVIEW : Phoebe Snow: Back to Life at the Roxy

“Isn’t she dead?” asked a friend upon learning of the long-absent Phoebe Snow’s return to town Monday night.

Ah, the perils of the comeback trail.

The Snow show was not booked into Forest Lawn but rather the Roxy, a dead giveaway that the songstress is indeed still among the living. Not that it’s been easy to tell during the last eight years. The recorded output of this unlikely but unforgettable star, who had her first and biggest hit 15 years ago with “Poetry Man,” has been limited during most of the ‘80s to one vocal track on a Dave Grusin LP and anonymous advertising jingle work.

Snow is back with a lovely new record, “Something Real,” her first album since 1981 and her first good one in a much longer while than that. At the Roxy, the sly, self-deprecating and surprisingly cocky singer seemed to feel obligated to explain just what tragedies or banalities have kept her out of the loop all those years.

The only allusion to a serious illness she endured were repeated thanks to two doctors in the house. She did make touching reference to her “multiply-handicapped” 13-year-old daughter in introducing her version of “At Last,” a bluesy number Etta James sang on the score of “Rain Man.”

Otherwise, Snow dryly informed the sold-out crowd, “In the last eight years I’ve been doing a lot of laundry . . . sorting socks . . . baking bread . . . just hanging around the house and cutting cheese”--a beat for a laugh--”for hors d’oeuvres.”

Snow has not returned without an agenda--largely aimed at letting the world know she has no designs on retaining the throne of “the Angst- ridden, aging hippie queen of folk guitar.” To that end, once past the gentle opener, “Poetry Man,” the 80-minute set took a much tougher turn, with her four-piece band providing punchy backing on tunes touching base with both funk (Sly Stone’s “Thankful and Thoughtful”) and rock (her own new “Cardiac Arrest”).

Other misconceptions also bit the dust--such as her celebrated “jazz-scat abilities.” Alone with her acoustic guitar, Snow teased the audience with a bar of that ability before gravely intoning, “I’d rather be stark naked on Rodeo Drive during rush hour with a film crew, and then go home and watch it on the 11 o’clock news, than scat-sing.” Oh .

Perhaps the woman doth protest too much about her desire to be less genteel and more of a rock ‘n’ roller; the set could have used more of the quiet moments that fill up much of her current album. But she left no doubt about her energy or ability, and she’s hardly uncomfortable in a more upbeat, R&B-centered; mold.

At a time when good popular singers (like Whitney Houston) feel compelled to hit every note on a scale, and weak ones (like Paula Abdul or Samantha Fox) scarcely seem to know what a scale is, Snow stands out much more than she did in her defining era.

She doesn’t use (or overuse) her precious instrument in predictable ways; those inhuman-sounding high notes aren’t necessarily used as glass-shattering balladic climaxes, but more often as midpoint transitions into more charged-up codas.

Remarkably unchanged for all intents and appearances, Snow also seems surprisingly undated--and the bravado of this former “shy girl” who flexed her bicep at show’s end was not undeserved.

Opening the show alone on piano with prerecorded backing tracks was Grayson Hugh, who has a hit on adult contemporary radio with “Can’t We Talk It Over in Bed,” formerly a flop for Olivia Newton-John.

A terminally middle-of-the-road singer trying hard to be hip, Hugh seemed to be attempting to play soulful, gritty music aimed at people who don’t like soulful, gritty music--in other words, a self-defeating kind of thing. His pointlessly histrionic version of “Bring It On Home to Me” was a truly irritating thing.