WEEKEND REVIEW : Pop Music : Merchant Radiates Energy at Wiltern

The strangest thing happened about half an hour into Natalie Merchant’s concert at the Wiltern Theatre on Friday. It was like a jolt of caffeine shot through the house--you could practically smell it, as if everyone had stopped at Starbucks on the way.

The audience got on its feet, the band boosted its dynamics and, most important, Merchant got a surge of energy and strutted around the stage like a Mizrahi model. What had thus far been a rather tepid show suddenly transformed into a robust brew of pop-folk-poetics.

Merchant is, in fact, a perfect Starbucks kind of pop artist--with an air of sophistication, but in a mass-marketable form, a la Sting. (Merchant was actually drinking what appeared to be herbal tea to sooth a flu-ravaged throat.)

Unlike Sting, Merchant hasn’t used her break from the band with which she became a star as an opportunity to flaunt sophistication. No pseudo-highbrow jazz antics for her in either the recent solo debut album “Tigerlily” or in this first of two nights at the Wiltern--her first L.A. shows since splitting from 10,000 Maniacs.

Merchant’s ivory exterior remains something of a barrier--though to fans it’s mystique--and the poetry of her new songs is no less mannered than much of the Maniacs’ material. But the enrichened support of her new band, tasty but with a few attractively rough edges, justifies the solo move. Guitarist Jennifer Turner particularly stood out--her showcase on “I May Know the Word” sounded like some great lost David Gilmour excursion. And the three Maniacs songs done Friday were livened up with percolating quasi-world-music rhythms, which on “These Are the Days” prompted Merchant to let her hair fly loose as she danced around the stage.

She really let her hair down, metaphorically speaking, in an extended encore segment. Losing all traces of aloofness, she started with an unlikely but credible version of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” and followed with songs associated with Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin and Irma Thomas--three notably spunky role models.

Even more unguarded, she punctuated the closing run with an impromptu (and failed) attempt at Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” and a story about a recent dream about Eddie Vedder trying to kill her. If she’s this feisty, Vedder wouldn’t stand a chance.

The opening set by Pennsylvania band the Innocence Mission also included a Joni Mitchell song, in this case “Both Sides Now”--the anthem of sensitive young female singer-songwriters. In the bird-call voice and unassuming manner of front-person Karen Peris, the song seemed about naivete retained rather than lost, anchoring a charming and sneakily accomplished poetic aesthetic that’s still untainted by cynicism.