That was a new Suzanne Vega on stage making her debut Wednesday at Ravinia.
No longer a willowy waif, she’s a little more solid these days, even if it appears that she’s terminally pale.
But it’s not just her physique that’s changed: Her thin, reedy voice is now a sure bossa nova vehicle, Astrud Gilberto recast as a hip, half-Puerto Rican New Yorker whisper-singing cinema verite songs about how the heart opens and closes.
On Wednesday night, Vega put her voice in the spotlight, eschewing all the clatter and clang of her usual five-piece band and its fancy fusion of folk and techno (the same band that accompanied her last year at the Park West).
Accompanied–and only on about half the tunes–by longtime bassist Michael Visceglia, Vega stripped down to a new version of an older self: pure and simple folk singer.
If it was hard to imagine this Vega and the girl from the Greenwich Village coffeehouses as one and the same, it’s only because this one’s so much better, so much more sophisticated and serene.
Between songs, her banter had the comfort and humor of girl talk, as if she and the audience were all close friends.
And if it was welcome to hear songs like “Luka” and “Small Blue Thing” back in their original settings, it was positively revelatory to listen to more recent work, such as “Bad Wisdom” and “The World Before Columbus,” without any of the percussive dressing provided on vinyl by Vega’s producer-husband, Mitchell Froom.
One of the more interesting discoveries is that Vega is a surprisingly skilled guitarist.
Vega was followed on stage by Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, who made a triumphant Ravinia premiere of his own two years ago.
Accompanied by bassist Steve Lucas and drummer Ben Riley, Cockburn plied his own guitar magic on songs such as “If a
Tree Falls” and “Night Train,” contrasting his melodic, sure
playing with the doubts expressed in the darker, more questioning lyrics.
Unfortunately for Cockburn,
he followed one of pop’s most precise and imagistic lyricists in Vega, and his own words–while certainly heartfelt–seemed terribly flat and literal by comparison. Good thing he leaned on that guitar.
