Pop Reviews : Childs: Glimmer of Hope

When singer Toni Childs toured in support of her 1988 debut album, “Union,” she closed her shows with but a single candle held to her face providing illumination. She took the role of a worldbeatnik earth mother, skipping barefoot from depression into an open future.

Now touring for her second album, “House of Hope,” the Los Angeles-based Childs opened by candlelight Thursday at the Variety Theatre. But this time it was a full candelabrum, which she lit with leaden solemnity. And she--clad in black--was now a tragic Gothic victim, wallowing in despair.

It’s a role that flattered neither her nor her songs, which on the recent album are rich, affecting portraits of people struggling--and succeeding--to keep their heads above emotional water.

Childs didn’t even seem to be looking for the surface through most of Thursday’s show, submerging herself in melodramatic posturing. The lush Peter Gabriel-like textures of her albums were also drowned by the bombastic, characterless seven-piece band, which often overwhelmed even Childs’ incomparably powerful, Phoebe Snow-on-steroids voice.

Childs finally broke through toward the end as she displayed some gospelish fervor. The (relatively) sunny spirit carried into the encores, where she once again finished, yes, with a single candle and a foundation of hope. But the predictability of the gesture left little more than the platitudes of an evening of 12-step pop.

Childs could learn a lesson from opening act Peter Himmelman, whose too-brief solo acoustic set communicated a sense of strength and wonder--grounded in his Orthodox Jewish faith--with as much easy elan and wit as the headliner’s was bogged down by off-putting weightiness.