Indigo Girls: Rising Up to Listen

For those of us who are not dedicated to living the politically correct life, who've spent more money supporting a nasty habit than a good cause, whose sense of community has more to do with proximity to good take-out than shared humanity -- Indigo Girls can be a tad earnest. Of course, they're right about the immigrants and the government and the bigots and the burning churches. Which makes this lesser mortal feel like a real shit for not doing my part to make the world a better place. Maybe if my parents had played more folk records . . .

The Rays and the Salierses, however, did a fine job raising their girls. Unlike some artists, for whom live performance is a real crapshoot (ever see Van Morrison or Miles Davis?), Indigo Girls on stage are exactly what you'd expect: reliable, rock-solid, and revered by the nearly 17,000 fans who swayed and sang, mainly on their feet, for two hours at Great Woods last Friday. And it's ironic that a duo dedicated to social and political awareness should strike their most profound chords in songs chronicling the meanderings of heart and soul. Their bluegrass-flavored "Get Out the Map" (from the new Shaming of the Sun, on Epic), along with "Galileo" and "Closer to Fine," from earlier albums, buoyed even the most earthbound concertgoer with loping circles of jubilant chords, pristine harmonies, and words that find a brilliant, contagious ray of hope wedged among the environmental disasters and screwed-up relationships.

Even when their spotlight turned to the steaming pile of foibles and flaws, the Girls didn't preach. They've traded the soapboxes and fierce literalism of their folk forebears for something more like topical impressionism. Which makes the medicine go down a whole lot sweeter. Emily Saliers (the angelic redhead) performed the new ballad "Leeds" and dissected blind-eye politics with a few tender piano chords and stream-of-consciousness lines like "Was it ever so the evil creep like ivy, toe-hold on the stronger half of nature's dichotomy/Beating back a path through nothing more than pure insistence until here becomes the distance." Despite the way it reads on paper, in concert Saliers and her fans followed it like a beacon on the path to higher consciousness.

Of course, an Indigo Girls fan is likely to fall on the progressive side of the issues before she/he arrives at the concert. Every lyrical reference to gay sexuality -- and there are many more on the new album than there have been in the past -- drew ecstatic cheers from the audience. But Amy Ray, who plays rumble girl to Saliers's girl-next-door, exudes a raw eroticism that crosses gender-preference lines and is partly responsible for putting Indigo Girls on the mainstream music map. Ray's gruff, intense voice on disc is matched by a charismatic, if understated, rock goddess in concert. Her edgy new songs and unassuming persona ring of Springsteen, especially her quietly urgent take on the dark and ominous "Scooter Boys." By the time she made out with the microphone on the bluesy cha-cha "Don't Give That Girl a Gun" and cut harder, faster, and looser than this folk duo ever have for "Shed Your Skin," I, a happy breeder, was ready to strap my hands across her engine and get the hell out of town.

But where Springsteen plays it as it lays, Indigo Girls' rendition of Real Life -- both the pain and the glory -- is mythologized, infused with poetry that can turn cloying and overwrought. I suppose it depends on your threshold for lovely, humorless folk rock. This is a firmly entrenched tradition in American music, and as long as there are talented musicians fighting the good fight and taking long, laborious looks inside themselves, decent people will rise up and listen. Me, I'm taking notes.

-- Joan Anderman