kd lang and the Siss Boom Bang, Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Anchorage, Alaska, September 17, 2011.

By Tim Van Schmidt

I wasn’t quite sure what to make out of kd lang’s new band and show when they took the stage at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage. Here was a woman being touted as a performer with perfect pitch, but to begin with that “perfect pitch” was buried underneath the overall power of the band- a fully electric unit. The songs were flavorful enough, lang was plenty active on stage and the audience seemed pleased, but I was hoping that this full sound would not be all there was to the band’s set- maybe a little more "siss" and not so much "boom" and "bang."

Then lang announced that she and her cohorts were about to take the audience on a “spiritual journey,” starting, she said drily, with a song by that “famous country band” the Talking Heads. The song, “Heaven,” was just what this situation needed- something slow, deep and ethereal. lang’s voice swelled, hardly needing the extra texture added to the vocal mix to make something more extraordinary happen.

Then lang and band kicked into the huge pay-off number of the night, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Since performing the tune at the last Winter Olympics, this song has probably become a necessity of every show, but in Anchorage, she did not let any hint of tiredness enter into the performance. It was a stunningly emotional and gorgeously arranged piece that brought the audience to its feet at its end.

After such a strong one-two punch of vocal power, it then became a pleasurable waiting game to see if lang would reach such a peak again in the show. I’m not sure anything else in the evening’s show matched the gravity of that particular 10 minutes, but lang often let her voice do its thing throughout a selection of country-flavored, rock-tinged material.

But beyond lang’s voice- and that great couplet of pieces- the evening was more about the obvious pleasure lang was taking with her new situation. She gregariously described the group’s first meeting in Nashville just about a year ago, where she immediately knew that “magic” was at hand.

I liked it that lang was so pleased with her group and it seemed to have her fired up. With all that power backing her up, lang apparently felt freed up to dance during the instrumental breaks and to visually synch in with various members during the course of the show. She approached the front of the stage often, crouching down to emphasize the progress of the songs while maintaining a big grin throughout.

This evening was the second night of a two night stand in Anchorage and apparently lang and crew had gotten out earlier that day to do some biking on the coastline trail. While admitting being a little tired from the adventure, it seemed the group in general was having a blast in Anchorage. This was underscored when the group came out for an encore dressed in some pirate gear- in honor of a Pirate Pub Crawl already in progress in downtown Anchorage. This bunch seems to like to have fun and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they joined the other “pirates” trolling the bars after the show.

The Anchorage Center for the Performing Arts is an impressive facility, big and cavernous. I was seated up in the balcony and that worked just fine in terms of sound and sight lines. The opener for the evening was Anchorage singer-songwriter Melissa Mitchell, who delivered some energetic material with a strong, expressive voice. Her set was pretty short, but enough to indicate that Anchorage has some talent of its own.