Dido Succeeds Just by Being Talkative Self

With such songs as “Thank You,” which celebrates her lover’s way of turning a rotten day good, Dido gives the impression of naturally looking on the bright side. Yet during her sold-out concert Monday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, the English dance-pop artist altered that perception with hints at darker personality aspects.

Wearing a glittering red tank top and tight blue jeans, the sweet-faced, shaggy-haired singer-songwriter didn’t exactly reveal a close kinship with rapper Eminem, whose sampling of “Thank You” on his new album has helped boost the profile of her 1999 debut collection, “No Angel.”

She sang such numbers as the dreamy, yearning hit single “Here With Me” (the theme to TV’s teen-alien drama “Roswell”) with a genteel serenity that, by itself, might have made the hourlong set just blandly pretty. But Dido’s between-song explanations of how various tunes originated provided some urgency, revealing a young woman who consciously struggles against her bleaker tendencies.

During the show, which included all of “No Angel” along with a couple of new songs, the London native, 28, said she wrote the quavery, mid-tempo ballad “Slide” to steel herself during a time when she felt unable even to leave the house. The gently defiant “My Life” came out, she said, after her older brother and frequent collaborator Rollo Armstrong, a noted U.K. DJ-producer, made fun of her desire to be a singer.

She offered no personal back story for the new song “Don’t Leave Home,” but it added an uncharacteristically chilling dimension to her writing with its portrayal of how drug addiction slowly insinuates itself, before the victim even knows what’s happened.

Her backing quintet included a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer, as well as a keyboardist and turntablist providing the electronic textures of drum-n-bass and trip-hop. The guitar work often had a vaguely classical feel, reflecting Dido’s early musical training. Yet stripped of its studio lushness, the music sounded almost folkish at times.

This more understated, and not always riveting, presentation sometimes exposed pedestrian lyrical phrases, while also showcasing some clever turns. Her voice sounded more earthly in concert, not as commandingly ethereal as on the record but hardly wimpy, retaining that bewitching, feathery little break around the higher notes on such standouts as “Here With Me” and the sinuous “Hunter.”

Still, Dido’s buoyant personality and confidence eased her past the cliches. In a world where so many pop stars get by on nothing but their looks and carefully crafted images, it was refreshing to hear an artist who wasn’t afraid to be herself.