Melissa Manchester
You Gotta Love the Life
Café Carlyle, NYC, June 14, 2014
Reviewed by Rob Lester for Cabaret Scenes
That full mane of curly hair flies in her exuberance and calibrated abandon, voice and heart likewise likeably full of joy and acceptance. Melissa Manchester is still “Looking Through the Eyes of Love,” but isn’t blinded to—or by—harder realities. It’s a rewarding and too-rare pleasure to spend an hour with her at the Café Carlyle where she’ll be spreading sunshine and sage stuff on the stage through June 21. Maturity, perspective, and humor inform the veteran’s splendid presentation. (“I’m your representative from the age of vinyl,” she welcomes the crowd, and she reprises trademark hits of yore, along with recent upbeat items showing she’s still comfortably feisty and funky.)
Involved, fresh phrasing in her singing and piano playing keep things far from rusty, rote or remote; there’s more relish than relic or mere recycling. “Don’t Cry Out Loud” and “Midnight Blue” thus are genuinely moving, not just memory comfort zone re-kindlers. (Her cozy “Be My Baby” baby-boomer era re-make fills that role, encouraging the audience to chime in with back-up vocals.)While choosing using spontaneity-bruising pre-recorded instrumental tracks (ugh!!) for selections from her in-the-works CD didn’t work for me, I certainly join the loyal in welcoming her back to the recording studio for her first full-length album in a decade. But the intermission hasn’t hurt her mission to make us think and feel and sail with her wail. Assuming the patrons at the pricey Café Carlyle would have its share of old fans (old fogeys?
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), she suggested we likely technology-challenged folks ask family members of the younger generation how to download that preview single track from her website. But she was quick to include herself in the somewhat clueless clan, explaining that her pop music–writing students at the University of Southern California introduced her to the concept of funding her album through soliciting bucks via the interested out there on the internet. Oh, how times have changed. But at least melifulous Melissa hasn’t changed too much: that earthy earth mother vibe, mixed with ageless wonder, is still in her approach. And while she was no stranger to the changing musical styles, she hasn’t adopted the kind of time-specific trendy tics in her vocals that would lead one to call her Melisma Manchester or adopt a demanding, tough woman persona to be Melissa Maneater. She’s warm and lusty in a natural way. Talent and truths terrifically shine through.
Yes, her own songs and those with such collaborators as Peter Allen, Carole Bayer Sager, and Marvin Hamlisch qualify her for new, expanded, revised second edition of that Great American Songbook. But as far as the classics that laid the groundwork, she gave more than a passing nod to that material with which she’s long had more than a passing acquaintance. A caffeinated blend of Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” and Cole Porter’s “From This Moment On” was entered into with enthusiasm and polish (but with those ill-advised toted-along pre-recorded instrumental tracks). Contrarily,proving that a lot less can be a lot more, an a cappella “Something Wonderful” from The King and I is stunning in its stark impact, with the voices of her two on-stage colleagues providing an awe-inspiring “ahhhh” featherbed.
At times, it was slightly distracting to have otherwise subtle—and skillful— percussionist/back-up vocalist Susan Holder holding the center-stage position (so M.M. could be at the stage-left piano on the tiny stage), especially with her being a beaming rounder-faced version of the star with seemingly the same reddish-brown hair hue and similarly freely frizzy ’do. Multi-tasking for the asking, Stephan Oberhoff is a major asset, strong and supportive, on guitar, electric keyboard (and acoustic piano when Melissa opted to stand at the mic stand). And his vocal duet on “Whenever I Call You Friend” felt like genuine friendship as he filled shoes once shod by Kenny Loggins in the music icons’ collaboration.
Quick stories behind compositions, like a drunken customer’s offhand remark turning into a song title, added to the we-are-all-in-this-together feeling. And it all came full circle with the title song of the show and gestating album, an eyes-open ode to the ups and downs and bumps and bliss of a traveling performer’s lot. And Melissa Manchester gives us a lot to like, with a lot of love.
