Maria McKee – Acoustic Tour 2006
Again and again on this intimate concert recording, Maria McKee creates a mood, haunted or longing or joyous as the song calls for — and then, again and again, she shatters that mood. She does this mainly by announcing “Thank you” to her audience before the last note of every number has drifted away, and even before her audience has applauded, cheered, or done anything else for which it might be thanked, as if “Thank you” were the final words to every song she’d ever heard.
Sometimes she fills the spaces between songs with twaddle about the size of her apartment or with in-joke tee-heeing with her sole accompanist, the fine harmony singer Susan Otten. You need a pretty high tolerance for the cult of Maria McKee to tolerate these revelations, they’re so unconnected to her material.
But then she begins another song, and, again, you’re hooked. She strums her guitar through Lone Justice numbers “Shelter” and the little masterpiece “Don’t Toss Us Away”, then switches to piano for a sweet and thrilling version of her Stephen Sondheim-styled “High Dive” and for transfixing covers of Richard Thompson’s “Has He Got A Friend For Me” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Backstreets”.
For my money, the full-throated McKee has long been among the most expressive singers on the planet, as well a vastly underrated interpreter. But, unless she has something to say, I wish she’d shut up and sing.