Pop Reviews : Stansfield at Pantages

For someone who’s touted as the blue-eyed queen of soul, England’s Lisa Stansfield didn’t put on a very soulful show on Monday at the sold-out Pantages Theatre.

Not that the concert wasn’t enjoyable. It just wasn’t the quality show you expect from a classy singer like Stansfield, who surfaced in 1989 with the exceptional single “All Around the World.” While soft-pedaling the soul, she delivered ultra-commercial, crowd-pleasing music.

Stansfield instantly clicked with the fans, who treated her with reverence while dancing and clapping to the medium-tempo soul grooves laid down by her eight-piece band. But it was mostly a throwback to the disco era--a lightweight pop/dance show with the soul element surprisingly sparse. By the end of the show her trademark harmonizing, performed with the two female backup singers, had grown tiresome.

On her albums, “Affection” and “Real Love,” Stansfield is a powerful, sultry soul presence. But in concert, she turned into a strutting, rather ordinary dance diva, dipping into an arsenal of cliched, sexy moves.