Pop Music Reviews : Folkie Shawn Colvin Crosses the Chasm

Club Lingerie would have been wise to put tables on the dance floor for Shawn Colvin’s two shows on Tuesday, as it’s been doing recently for its Sunday acoustic shows. The relatively small crowd on hand when the New York-based folkie began her early set beelined to the seats at the perimeters of the club, leaving a fair chasm for Colvin--armed with just an acoustic guitar--to play across.

The South Dakota native made a game go of it, mustering all her coffeehouse-trained talents to project through the club. It worked. Her voice (airy as it is) and her guitar playing (sparse though it be) filled the room effectively. And soon stragglers were seating themselves on the floor near the stage, filling the void.

Though some of her material draws on the restless-rambler folk tradition, on Tuesday she seemed best-suited to the rootedness contained in the verses of “I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night” that she uses to end her own “Something to Believe In,” and in her gentle, fluid version of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place.”

But contentedness isn’t usually the mark of a ground-breaker, and Colvin’s performance--something of a mix of Suzanne Vega and early Joni Mitchell--followed fairly predictable lines.