Review: Spectrum Center’s upper deck was closed for Brandi Carlile’s show. Why?
I was a little worried when I walked into Spectrum Center on Tuesday night and discovered that the arena’s entire upper level had disappeared behind black curtains.
Read more Review: Spectrum Center’s upper deck was closed for Brandi Carlile’s show. Why?
Uh-oh, I thought to myself. Did Brandi Carlile have trouble selling tickets in Charlotte?
I texted a venue representative to ask. The explanation was reassuring: The concert had always been planned for a lower-bowl configuration. While some upper-level seats were sold because of demand, those buyers were relocated downstairs Tuesday after the production was installed and additional lower-level seats became available.
In other words, the curtains were part of the plan, not a last-minute attempt to conceal thousands of empty seats — and Carlile was working within an arena deliberately reshaped to fit the occasion.
Then, for a little more than two hours, she kept reshaping it herself.
At various points, the 11-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter made Spectrum Center feel like a rock arena, a church revival, a comedy club, a family living room and — during a wonderfully precarious audience-request segment — a neighborhood bar where the musicians weren’t entirely sure they remembered the song.
“I’ve been looking forward to this gig,” Carlile told the crowd a few songs into her first Charlotte concert in a decade.
Spectrum Center was also by far the largest Charlotte venue Carlile had ever headlined, and she could sense it. “I feel like Celine Dion — like I don’t deserve to be here,” she continued. “But I’m gonna sing my ass off tonight.”
That Carlile delivered on the promise was hardly surprising. Whether singing newer material about middle age, memory and the painful thrill of watching her children become independent or staples such as “The Story,” she moved effortlessly from a tender whisper to a full-throated roar.
What recordings can’t prepare you for is her gift for stage banter. Sure, the stories occasionally wander, but so does the funniest person at a dinner party — and Carlile can make thousands of people feel as though they’re sitting around her table.
One minute, she was turning her wife, Catherine, into material, affectionately imitating the intimidating way a British spouse can answer a question with another question. The next, she was moving from Celine to Queen. “It’s hard not to feel like Freddie Mercury,” she said while sitting at a piano under a spotlight in a cavernous arena full of devotees.
“It’s hard not to feel like a very dramatic lesbian right now.”
And while Carlile made singing look easy, she didn’t necessarily describe it that way.
After sustaining the towering final note in “Right on Time,” she admitted, “I’m never not scared before I hit that note. I’m like, ‘What’s gonna come out of my mouth right now?’ Because you don’t know.” That vulnerability helps explain Carlile’s appeal — her voice can sound superhuman, but she insists on showing the human being operating it.
She was equally willing to let the audience watch her uncertainty during the show’s other great gambit: taking requests with longtime bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth. Carlile described it as a way “to make these places feel small and tight … just to see if we can pull it off.”
After a child waving a pink pompom persuaded them to attempt “Hard Way Home,” a decade-plus-old song they pretty clearly hadn’t rehearsed, the trio briefly looked lost — debating the capo position, testing the harmony and fumbling for the opening. Then they found it and performed the song with startling confidence.
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A second request, “That Wasn’t Me,” produced another assured performance after a similarly uncertain setup.
From where I sat, by the way, the requests appeared authentic; she didn’t fish around until someone named the song she wanted. I was genuinely impressed that they could retrieve the chords, harmonies and lyrics in real time.
More important, the uncertainty accomplished exactly what Carlile intended. It made Spectrum Center feel small.
At the same time, Carlile could make the room feel enormous. Her 2007 breakout hit “The Story” — whose emotional arc carries her from fragile whisper to gravelly roar — absolutely shredded in an NBA arena.
The night’s biggest surprise, however, came courtesy of fellow Seattle music icon Kim Thayil, the Soundgarden co-founder and lead guitarist whom Carlile said had jumped onto the tour bus in Nashville without even packing clothes. Wearing Carlile merchandise, Thayil electrified the hard-charging “Church & State” and stayed for “Sinners, Saints and Fools,” which also yielded a furious showcase from violinist Chauntee Ross and cellist Monique Ross, aka SistaStrings.
The main set was capped by Carlile’s splendid rendition of 2018’s “The Joke” — and if the night had ended after that, few in the heavily female and predominantly middle-aged crowd could have complained.
But she wasn’t finished. After the ritual encore break, Carlile returned with a nearly ideal closing sequence.
First, she welcomed back The Head and the Heart, whose warm, harmony-rich opening set had produced one of the night’s most memorable visuals: During “Arrow,” drummer Tyler Williams shook a maraca and tambourine while working the kick drum, periodically pounding the kit with the handheld instruments instead of sticks.
Reunited with Carlile, the band launched into a joyful, chaotic and — in her words — “unhinged” performance of “Hold Out Your Hand.”
Then came Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited,” whose gothic drama fit Carlile’s voice exquisitely and inspired some of her most aggressive guitar-playing of the night.
But while “Uninvited” could easily have served as a stirring finale, Carlile chose quiet instead.
“A Long Goodbye,” her haunting meditation on mortality, passing time and human connection, softened everything that preceded it. Then the lights vanished, and out of the darkness, Carlile’s unaccompanied voice emerged with one last surprise: a single, lovely chorus of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind.”
In my mind, I’m goin’ to Carolina
Can’t you see the sunshine?
Now can’t you just feel the moonshine?
And ain’t it just like a friend of mine to hit me from behind?
Yes, I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind…
For those final seconds, the darkness erased the scale of the room and left only her voice.
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1. “Returning to Myself”
2. “Human”
3. “Mainstream Kid”
4. “A War With Time”
5. “A Woman Oversees”
6. “Right on Time”
7. “Who Believes in Angels?”
8. “Hard Way Home” (audience request)
9. “That Wasn’t Me” (audience request)
10. “You Without Me”
11. “The Mother”
12. “The Story”
13. “You and Me on the Rock”
14. “No One Knows Us”
15. “Church & State”
16. “Sinners, Saints and Fools”
17. “The Joke”
18. “Hold Out Your Hand” (with The Head and the Heart)
19. “Uninvited” (Alanis Morissette cover)
20. “A Long Goodbye”
21. “Carolina in My Mind” (James Taylor cover)
