Gig review: Anastacia at The Piece Hall, Halifax
With honeyed-scotch gravel tones still intact, the Chicago singer shows she has lost none of her power a quarter-century-plus into her career.
“This is my first time playing Halifax,” Anastacia Lyn Newkirk – but known to her slew of fans spilled across the courtyard of The Piece Hall mononymously – intones a handful of songs into her performance. Behind her tinted shades, she grins. “I’m at the pinnacle of my success right now.”
The layers of irony beneath her statement are fundamentally double-edged; while it is true that the Chicago singer is no longer the commercial juggernaut she was at her peak two decades ago, playing to packed arenas on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, her stock has never truly gone away.
The best part of a quarter-century after her breakthrough, she retains a dedicated base for her swaggering pop gems, several of which have only become more canonized with age.
It helps that she still has the voice, honeyed-scotch gravel tones that can punch through the early wobbles of a sound mix that battles against a stiff Calderdale breeze. On a stage dressed up with a black-brick backdrop strafed by heart-knife graffiti and fairly lights, Anastacia emerges to Danny Elfman’s theme from The Simpsons for One Day in Your Life and proceeds to hammer her throat for 90-plus minutes, punctured by a slew of costume changes seemingly designed to ensure she doesn’t outshine her muscular band on merit alone.
Songs primarily toggle between propulsive arena power-chords – Now or Never, Stupid Little Things – and torch ballads – Staring at the Sun, You’ll Never Be Alone – frumped up with a few missteps; Overdue Goodbye proves frustratingly twee, and a backing-group medley of hen-do favourites from either side of the millennium is pretty soft.
Better is her diversions into rockier covers; an extended vamp through Free’s All Right Now while she switches outfits gives way to a faithful romp through the Guns N’ Roses classic Sweet Child o’ Mine is delightful fun.
Throughout, the singer cackles and whoops with ribald asides and Scooby-Doo impressions, all the way down to a home straight that recasts Left Outside Alone in an arrhythmic arrangement interloped through Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir.
By the time an a capella chorus follows I’m Outta Love, few voices have not been screamed hoarse – but not hers. “Halifax, I love you!” she says, and then she’s gone into the night.