Pop Music Reviews : Alannah Myles Hits Roxy With Her Best Shot

To say that Alannah Myles is the new Pat Benatar, however accurate, is to do both singers a disservice. Before moving on to motherhood and pop respectability, Benatar always looked a little out of her element as a Spandex queen; Myles, though, is a more natural hard-rocker than Benatar ever was, fitting into her chosen role as a saucy mama with lung power as well as she fit her skin-tight black bodywear on Monday at the Roxy.

This was Myles’ Los Angeles debut, but as a show-woman, the ambitious Canadian chanteuse came off as a seasoned performer already at the top of her professional form. Alternately feisty, teasing and grinning, Myles dropped to her knees and bounded on top of the speakers, her knockout looks and teasing sneers sending the males into ga-ga fantasyland and the gals into jealousyland.

Face, figure and insatiable drive aside, Myles also has a voice that can be occasionally angelic but more often is an in-your-face blast that sounds ruinous to the throat. Why, when she affects that mean-model look and curls her lip, she even looks a little like Elvis--subject of her recent, bluesy, No. 1 hit “Black Velvet.”

But depth? None of her other pop-metal songs are remotely in the same league, and if Myles stops somewhat short of overtly selling sex as a weapon, she doesn’t have much else of substance to pitch yet. Perhaps we should be grateful these days for a new female singer who can sing , but the sheer, shallow calculation that goes into Myles’ act makes the effort finally as unendearing and impersonal as it is viscerally impressive.