Cole’s Troubadour Concert Shows Off Her Extremes

Paula Cole framed her show at the Troubadour on Wednesday with intriguingly contrasting songs. She opened with John Lennon’s bitter, venting “Working Class Hero.” And she closed by evoking Edith Piaf with the triumphant “La Vie En Rose,” with Cole singing in French and sporting a pink wig, black gloves and a feather boa.

In between, Cole and her three-piece band (joined at times by a cellist and a second drummer) supplemented material drawn largely from her hit album “This Fire” with versions of Bob Marley’s “War” and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”

It was the perfect set of extremes for a singer-songwriter whose stock in trade is drama, with wide mood swings and theatrical punctuations a la her mentor, Peter Gabriel, and Tori Amos. In the absence of new material, these selections served as clues to possible directions as she follows an incredible run of fortune that included a Grammy win in February and the use of her song “I Don’t Want to Wait” as the theme for “Dawson’s Creek.”

If so, it’s a mixed bag. As strong as the Lennon and Marley songs are, their anthemic tone underscored the clumsiness of Cole’s own social commentary, such as the tired, trite gender role examinations of her big hit, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone.” “La Vie En Rose” and “Jolene,” on the other hand, though radically different from each other, deal with personal struggles and strengths, the territory Cole traverses more naturally and with at times nicely conflicted twists.

But maybe that’s reading too much into the choices. Cole noted her good fortune, remarking from the stage that just two years ago she was an unknown opening act at this same club. Accordingly, this show (the first of two scheduled nights) was a generous thank-you gift to loyal fans, a spirit that carried it even over her most dramatic excesses.