WEEKEND REVIEWS : Risk-Taker Ronstadt Keeps Them Waiting

Linda Ronstadt did get to the hits Friday night, but she did make the audience wait.

The singer divided her Universal Amphitheatre show roughly into thirds, starting off with the first seven numbers from her latest album, “Feels Like Home.” Then she followed with a good portion of her preceding album.

Finally came a third act of ‘70s smashes, and the patient audience’s relief. If this approach confounded some, it spoke well for the personal integrity of Ronstadt, who’s back in the pop-rock fold after a long, risk-taking time off. Ronstadt fared beautifully on newer country-rock ballads that allow her to slip into and slide around a melody, like the cautiously soaring “High Sierra.” And Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” done as a chorale with four backup singers (among them, the inestimable Valerie Carter singing a few lead lines), proved ethereal as intended.

Still, Ronstadt had to be the only person in the room to think a whole mini-set of mostly torpid Jimmy Webb ballads was a good idea. And her constant apparent reliance on a prompter for lyrics was a considerable visual distraction from what aural transcendence transpired.