The Indigo Girls continued their Shaming of the Sun tour on Friday night with an incredible performance for an electrified audience at Leede arena.
The duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, opened the concert with "It's Alright," an up-beat song from their most recent album, titled "Shaming of the Sun."
They followed "It's Alright" with "Joking," from their less recent "Rites of Passage" album.
Both of the first two tunes were anti-climactic, because the Indigo Girls did not put enough energy into them. They sang the up-beat "Joking" at a much slower tempo than usual, and Saliers even commented that they were a bit "dazed" from their airplane ride that day.
Touring without their usual back-up percussionists, vocalists and instrumentalists, the Indigo Girls only sang a few tunes from "Shaming of the Sun," probably because of the heavy instrumental background in many of the songs on the album.
Instead, they emphasized their talents on guitar, relying on many of the songs from "Rites of Passage," "Swamp Ophelia" and their breakthrough album, "Indigo Girls."
Between songs, the singers often changed guitars, varying among electric, acoustic and more unusual types, including banjos and ukuleles.
To compensate for the lack of background musicians, they played several extended guitar solos within the songs. Ray was especially dramatic in those sections, dancing around much more than Saliers did. But Saliers was by far the more skilled guitarist of the two.
The audience also filled some gaps on its own, belting out the Michael Stipe portion of the classic "Kid Fears" and singing the high melody behind Saliers' beautiful solo rendition of "Leeds," a newer slow song in which she played piano instead of guitar.
The duo worked well with the audience, and the highlights of the concert occurred when they encouraged the crowd to sing the lyrics, especially in tunes such as "Power of Two," "Least Complicated" and "Galileo."
But the concert had a few weak moments when Saliers and Ray sang a couple of songs they chose from their "Shaming of the Sun" album.
Several people sat down for the first time when the Indigo Girls performed "Shed Your Skin," and the audience was fairly indifferent to "Scooter Boys" as well.
The reaction indicated what everybody knows -- the Indigo Girls are popular because of their folk-styled songs with beautiful melodies and lyrics. They are not meant to stray into harder rock styles of music.
The low point of the concert occurred when they attempted to temporarily become Pink Floyd, playing a slide-guitar heavy "Wish You Were Here" that simply hurt the audience's ears.
But the weak spots were few and far between, and the Indigo Girls always bounced back by singing some of their more classic songs and stirring the audience back into the concert.
Not surprisingly, they closed the show with one of their oldest and most popular songs, "Closer To Fine." The duo invited some people to join them on the stage as they ended the performance with a song that was guaranteed to please.
