Vince Gill Brings Some Gritty New Tunes to His Smooth Act

Vince Gill is a living, breathing and singing testament to the virtues of living right. On Sunday at the Pond of Anaheim, the Oklahoma singer with the phenomenal voice came off as boyishly handsome and playfully sexy, and if he lacks the out-of-control dark side of Elvis--whose Southern gentleman manner Gill evokes--more power to him.

There were times during the two-hour-plus performance, in fact, when it seemed as if Gill’s biggest weakness was his lack of any. Not only did he trigger goose bumps during the knockout ballads that have placed him at the forefront of contemporary country music, but he also brought real electricity to up-tempo songs and sparked everything with superb guitar work.

He even introduced a couple of gritty new songs--the bluesy “One Dance With You” and the country-funky “Down to New Orleans”--that indicate he’s found a way out of the stylistic sameness that was beginning to settle into his recordings.

Gill’s unshakable faith in the power of love to overcome all obstacles, expressed in such hits as “Look at Us” and “I Still Believe in You,” can make it seem as though he’s somehow managed to avoid any dark nights of the soul when all hope is gone.

That impression, however, remains only if you listen to the words he’s singing. The anguished beauty in his voice always communicates life’s struggles. Gill simply has emerged from those struggles as the victor.

Patty Loveless was positively unflappable in her 45-minute opening set--a great quality in brain surgeons, defense lawyers and friends, but not always in country singers. Despite the inclusion of above-average material from her new “The Trouble With the Truth” album, she stuck to a pleasant middle ground between emotional peaks and valleys.