O.C. POP REVIEW : Childs Dwells on the Dark Side at Coach House

You can’t accuse Toni Childs of lacking the gumption to take on tough subjects.

The Los Angeles singer opened her show Tuesday night at the Coach House with songs locked in the isolation and madness and death-obsession of a Sylvia Plath. Before it ended, she was in Dylan Thomas territory, raging against the dying of the light.

That seriousness, funneled through a rich, throaty, horn-like voice, produced some memorably intense moments during Childs’ 80-minute set. The downside was that her seriousness, and the pervasive sobriety of her music, also could become claustrophobic and a little overbearing.

The full house responded to Childs’ fervency and commitment in a way that recalled the response Tracy Chapman elicits, or that their mutual stylistic godmother, Joan Armatrading, receives.

When Childs seemed to be lost for a moment midway through the concert, saying that she felt out of sorts returning to the stage (this was only the second show of her tour for her second album, “House of Hope”), words of encouragement were quickly forthcoming.

“Family, family,” called one woman.

Judging from some of Childs’ songs, though, the idea of being among “family” might cause a shudder rather than a glow of warm reassurance. The show’s two strongest songs were harrowing depictions of ties that become torments.

“Daddy’s Song” was about as nightmarish as it gets--a raw, uncompromising exposure of the psychic damage inflicted by an incestuous father. Childs held nothing back in a performance that had the awful fascination one might get from watching a drowning in progress. As the singer intoned the phrase “you showed no mercy” over and over, her voice fell in broad, descending arcs, as if someone were being pushed into an abyss. In the end, Childs refused to drown, clinging to the thought, “I’ve got to live” with half-strangled cries of desperation.

“I’ve Got to Go Now” portrayed another searing moment in a family’s life: the last confrontation between an abused wife and her husband as she packs up the kids to leave for good. This time, the song moved between anguish and an anthem-like affirmation of the woman’s decision to exit a hopeless situation. After singing about the need to escape, Childs came back with “Next to You,” which entertained embattled hopes of forging a healthy, intimate bond with a lover.

Childs clearly reached her fans deeply by going against the ironic grain of much of today’s pop music. But an excess of sincerity can lead to an air of self-importance or exaggerated delicacy. Childs overplayed her hand when she started dancing with her arms in a ghost embrace to illustrate the haunted loneliness and obsession of the character in “Heaven’s Gate,” a widow who won’t allow her grief to fade. The ceremonial candle she held during her hushed finale, “Dreamer,” also was a grandstanding gesture designed to let everyone know that some sacred stuff was going down.

A barefoot diva in a long, black gown, Childs needs to cultivate a lighter side. In her only departure from intense, personal material, she walked on tables, roused the crowd to its feet, and started chanting soapbox slogans during “House of Hope,” a song decrying the precarious future we’re leaving our children. It lacked the grounding in a specific situation that Childs brought to her best songs of family trauma.

Besides some humor or buoyancy, more varied musical shadings could have helped. Childs’ six-member backup band provided a faceless wallpapering of gurgling, African-influenced rhythms and broad guitar and synthesizer textures, all patterned after the by now too-familiar sound of Peter Gabriel’s “So” album.

Childs’ use of canned backing vocals, usually featuring her own voice, also had a distancing effect. Voices need to be in real time; if Childs can’t afford to hire backup singers, she ought to consider abandoning the album arrangements and reinventing her material for the stage, which usually makes for more exciting discoveries anyway.

Childs needs to be a better-rounded performer, but nobody needs to tell her how to make a deep emotional impact.

Opening was Vincent Rocco, a newcomer who shares a manager with Childs and has a debut album due out next year. Rocco wasn’t announced before he went on, and he didn’t do much to introduce himself, barely mumbling his name during the set. The audience was left wondering who he was. If nothing else, isn’t it just plain good manners to introduce yourself properly to strangers? It’s amazing how often newcomers will play an opening set without letting listeners know who they are, where they’re from, and what point they’re at in their career.

In any case, Rocco showed what he is--a capable heartland rocker with a husky, John Mellencamp-style voice. His rock songs, mostly taken at mid-tempo, were precisely rendered but could have used more bite. Rocco and his five-man band caught fire when they took their music in a more roots-oriented direction. A twanging country-influenced song worked well, and the highlight of the 35-minute set was the blues-based “Ride On,” which had a trace of Joe Cocker passion in it. Rocco did a fine job playing a man who knows his failings all too well but is too trapped by inertia to change. Lead guitarist John Shanks was a valuable player throughout with his cleanly articulated solos.