Nicole Atkins Sounds Amazing—Again

One of the things I admire about singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins, aside from her silky-yet-raspy-raw vocals, is the Everywoman appeal that manifests itself in her chameleon-like stage presence. One minute the New Jersey native is wearing a ladylike dress and pumps, belting out a torch song on Dave Letterman, or demurely answering Scott Simon’s civilized questions on NPR. The next, she’s flinging the F-bomb while dancing teasingly around a nightclub stage in a neo-hippie caftan. I had the pleasure of watching her do the later on a recent evening at Slims in San Francisco—a wet, windy, badass night on which many of her fans would’ve been justified in staying home and keeping dry. But they came anyway, because, well, their diva had just blown into town.

Atkins made venturing out in the rain—on a weeknight, no less—worth their while. “It’s a Monday night and you guys came out—I’m gonna cry,” she purred into one of two microphones set up on the small stage, which during songs she’d been moving back and forth between, like a woman torn between two equally desirable lovers. “It’s not even my birthday this time. But you still shoulda brought cake.”

The 35-year-old Italian-American singer spent the bulk of the show performing songs from her recently released third album, Slow Phaser, her first recording since she ended her relationship with Columbia Records in 2009. Released on her own Oh’Mercy label with support from a fan-based PledgeMusic campaign, the album is her most confident, creative effort to date, an idiosyncratic mix of quirky, catchy tunes that appeal to a woman’s many moods. This evening, her repertoire included “Girl You Look Amazing,” a highly danceable song she dedicated to “my friend Chrissy from Jersey”; “Who Killed the Moonlight,” Slow Phaser’s hypnotic opening track; and “The Way it Is,” an ode to impossible love and a standout from her 2005 debut album, Neptune City.

Whether she’s singing about pompous hipsters (“Cool People”), the morning after (“The Worst Hangover”), or the mystifying power of sexual attraction (“It’s Only Chemistry”), Atkins proves that positive energy and balance are key not only to the universe, but also to making a damn good record. Toward the end of the show at Slims, she descended from the stage (“These mic stands are fucking with my feng shui”) and summoned her peeps to close in on her on the dance floor, where she serenaded them with a final ditty. Surely no crowd has felt warmer on such a crappy Fog City night.