POP MUSIC REVIEW : MacColl Shows Versatility at Troubadour

Into her encores on Wednesday at the Troubadour, Kirsty MacColl revived the version of “Miss Otis Regrets” she contributed to the “Red Hot + Blue” Cole Porter tribute album a few years back. The number is amusingly emblematic of the sexual politics of MacColl’s own pungent original material: Repressed woman finally snaps, yet even in breakdown remains thoroughly, calmly, archly English.

Not unlike Miss Otis, the seemingly regret-free MacColl has a good amount of bite to what she does, but remains ever the sophisticate. This relentlessly charming set harked back energetically enough at times to the days when the singer was loosely part of the new wave scene, and also provided an updated fair showing of her stylistic versatility and dry wit.

MacColl brought along a rockin’ little combo equally adept at putting a subtle acoustic spin on her wryly self-proclaimed “songs about domestic misery” or encoring with the unlikely Ramones song “I Wanna Be Sedated.”

Behind much of MacColl’s coolly rendered Porter-to-punk classicist pop is an agreeable gentlewoman on the edge of a nervous breakdown--think Nick Lowe with a short skirt and a knife.

The New Jersey band Fossil opened with a similarly aimed but far less mature mix of power-pop and humor. Its hard-rocking “Moon” may be infectious, but ultimately the group proved plagued by a severe case of the cutes.