Lost in the Translation : Irish Singer Mary Black’s Voice Is Remarkable, but Vocal Perfection Didn’t Resonate Deeply in O.C. Debut

Mary Black’s concert Thursday at the Coach House was a study in vocal perfection, and a lesson in how little vocal perfection counts if the aim of singing isn’t just a talent showcase, but an enactment of emotional experience.

The Irish singer has followed a path parallel to Judy Collins’, moving from a traditional folk grounding--Celtic in Black’s case--early in her career to a pop-diva stance that sometimes returns to her roots but as often goes for a contemporary sheen.

Black’s new album, “Shine,” offers only traces of Irish content, as it trolls for fans in waters that have yielded riches for such polished folk-pop figures as Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Black, who has been prominent in Ireland since the early 1980s, made her Orange County debut before a wildly enthusiastic, near-capacity audience that included a large contingent of transplanted Irish.

The first half-hour of her 105-minute concert was captivating for the sheer beauty of her voice. Without straining for power or effect, Black commanded a splendid, full-bodied alto that swept a listener along on tonal pleasure alone. She looked like a natural too, swaying or lightly throwing back her head and seeming completely caught up in, and delighted by, the act of singing.

It was impressive to behold, like watching a luxury liner cut effortlessly through the sea. Black made it easy to see why she has long been one of the most popular singers in Ireland, with its tradition of esteemed theatrical tenors. Black’s rich, large voice makes her an heiress to that legacy.

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Her backup was a studio-accurate six-man band that added to the sense of flawlessness while flavoring the mix with fiddle, accordion and tin whistle for occasional folk-ish effects. (Sax player Carl Geraghty could have cut down some of the Kenny G factor in his overly sweetened playing.)

As the show went on, however, there was little sense of risk, not much attention paid to thematic connections between songs--Black interprets songs rather than writing her own--and none of the raw patches that can help a performance onstage seem to intersect with the tumult of lived life.

The five songs she sang from “Shine” were all melodically rich, though she gets points off for the blatant U2 “With or Without You” rip-off framing Paul Brady’s “I Will Be There.” But they were too down-the-middle and one-dimensional in their message and expression to resonate beyond their prettiness.

A traditional ballad, “The Holy Ground,” offered the kind of twist much of Black’s contemporary material lacked: When its pining speaker gets back her lover who had gone to sea, she matter-of-factly accepts that they’ll drink up the earnings from his voyage and he’ll have to ship out again.

Black put lots of breathy portent into a great Richard Thompson song, “I Misunderstood,” but her armored perfection didn’t allow for a convincing portrayal of the emotional bent pretzel that is this lacerated song’s jilted narrator.

When Black veered briefly into Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” her band’s performance made one thankful that there isn’t more Irish reggae, and her vocal made one wish for the more expressive, earthy grit of a Marley.

In “Ellis Island,” however, the acute feeling and epic, historical scope of the lyric, which depicts an Irish emigrant’s sad and final farewell to his home folk, supported all of Black’s grandness. It proved that sometimes perfection is just perfect.

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Andy White, who last played here as part of the engagingly earthy pop-rock trio Alt, opened this all-Irish touring bill with a name and approach that were the headliner’s opposite.

White doesn’t have much of a voice but gets around that in time-honored singer-songwriter fashion by having a good tune and a well-turned story. He was too vocally reticent through much of his 40-minute set, but he connected toward the end with jacked-up intensity that helped the story lines hit home.