Anita Baker

Photo by John Anderson

Anita Baker

"Austin, all I brought for you tonight is a bunch of old love songs," shrugged Anita Baker. "Is that all right?" Her bright lights, big city stage backdrop, and ninepiece band winked hard. Poured into a short, black velvet dress, ripe and curvy and tickled with sequin and lace, the 52-year-old modern soul sensation swelled with her backers into her first greatest hit "Sweet Love" as she posed for pictures and waved at her sound monitors for a better mix. Such was the evening in a nutshell. Baker's multimillion career in the latter half of the 1980s matched jazz diva grandeur to Teflon radio R&B, but live on the comeback trail the streetwise singer burst the seams of her dessert attire with Detroit-reared shake and sass. Unfortunately, her sound team wasn't equal to the task. "Turn the keyboard down, not me," she addressed the stage wings at one point, but her band wasn't offering any help either. When Baker motioned for a walking bassline, her man played statue. The singer compensated for first-tour-date glitches by inhabiting the roomy stage like a teenager singing to the mirror in her bedroom, before finally sitting at the piano bench next to one of her bandleaders. "I'm tired; I'm exhausted," she grinned. "I'm too old for this basically." Her middle ground between Gladys Knight and Lauryn Hill on set staple "Caught Up in the Rapture," Baker rounding her chorus melodies with wordless Sarah Vaughan-like intonations, sounded of classic vintage even if her full, lush vocals weren't as cushioned by her live entourage as she clearly desired. A surprise appearance by alto sax headliner Gerald Albright squared the two pros off in a Memphis-style musical goad, but even 80 minutes into the show, Baker was still disappearing into the wings to fix the sound mix. "Giving You the Best That I Got" and "Angel" made darn sure the audience wasn't at all concerned with those same issues. Closer "You Bring Me Joy," again guesting Albright, cut loose a Baker cry to shatter every crystal chandelier in a 5-mile radius.