Concert Review: Carol Lipnik at SpiegelWorld, NYC 10/30/08

Icons by Siouxsie & the Banshees played over the PA minutes before multistylistic siren Carol Lipnik and her sensationally good pianist Dred Scott took the stage...
.. she was mesmerizing. Thursday's show spotlighted only one side of her: this was the noir cabaret set (she's also equally good at old-school soul and gypsy-inflected rock). As a singer, Lipnik's calling card is her spectacular four-octave range, and she gave the audience plenty of thrills – when she went up the scale, they screamed for more. But her greatest strength is that her vocals always serve her songs. She only pulls out the big crescendos when she absolutely needs them, and this show saw her inhabiting a strong, confident lower register about eighty percent of the time (which made the thrills and chills all the more thrilling and chilling). Her first number had her casually tossing off a sinister, almost supersonic trill, as if she'd decided to school the theremin in the opening band.

Scott gave the boisterous second number, You're My Firefly a stomping beat with his feet and kept perfect time. Much of Lipnik's catalog is phantasmagorical and carnivalesque (which makes sense for someone born and raised in Coney Island), and the actually rather touching Two-Headed Calf perfectly capsulized that feel. Two of her songs included references to drowning someone, including the Weimar blues When I Was a Mermaid and a riveting number told from the point of view of the Creature from the Black Lagoon that featured some spectacular vocalese.

"Chaos is the master, but I don't mind," she intoned matter-of-factly on Freak House Blues, Scott playing its eerie, wobbly melody on synthesizer. Then the two brought up guitarist Pete Wyer (who has a new cd just out on Thirsty Ear) for a couple of vivid, Rumi-inspired numbers, the second of which was based on a poem that goes something like "I'm in love with you, I've already drunk the poison – what's the use of candy?" After a tongue-in-cheek yet haunting tune about "mole people" living deep in the bowels of the city, they closed with a Brian Eno song. The audience wanted more but didn't get it, perhaps just as well considering the pretty much omnipresent thud from next door. Carol Lipnik plays the Zipper Theatre on Dec 4 at 8, a vastly more accommodating, comfortable space where her unique, rich and strangely beautiful stylings (and her fans) can count on getting the respect they deserve.