MUSIC REVIEW: Bad-girl image doesn't hurt
Partway through her set of saucy, loosey-goosey soul tunes Tuesday night, the scrappy British singer Amy Winehouse turned suddenly sweet. "Mr. or Mrs. Bartender," she said in a rugged but charming London accent, "can I get an Amaretto sour, please?"
It wasn't an unusual request, but Winehouse, 23, has what you might call a reputation.
In her native England, where her irreverent new album, "Back to Black" (Universal), recently reached No. 1, Winehouse has become tabloid fodder for her unladylike drinking binges and the occasional botched performance, one of which was canceled after she was reportedly found vomiting offstage. (She later said it didn't happen.)
Her management encouraged her to enter a detox program, but her response was a bouncy single called "Rehab" that features a happily self-destructive chorus: "They tried to make me go to rehab/I said, no, no, no."
For a time, Winehouse made a point of not drinking during interviews, but that quickly fell by the wayside.
Is this the kind of reputation that a young firebrand soul singer should try to live down - or live up to? Winehouse, who's still relatively unknown in America, is an exciting discovery because she's the opposite of well-mannered neo-soul singers such as John Legend and Van Hunt. She's also part of a wave of U.K. artists, including pop singer Lily Allen and maverick rockers Arctic Monkeys, who are vividly documenting in song the rowdy pub life of young Brits. (In one number, Winehouse shoos away a lover with the line, "Hand me your Stella and fly.")
Tuesday night, Winehouse combined the roles of classy torch singer and crass street chick. Her 10-piece backing band, made up partly of the Brooklyn group The Dap-Kings, wore suits - but Winehouse sported a ratty bouffant and a tight black dress that revealed tattoos scattered up and down her arms. She belted out gorgeous songs in a gutsy voice but delivered foul-mouthed one-liners like a rapper: On "Addicted," she compared marijuana to men and decided it "does more than any -- did."
On "Just Friends," she tried to resist her urges: "It's never safe for us/Not even in the evening, 'cause I've been drinking/Not in the morning when your -- works." If only Ghostface Killah, who recently appeared on a remix of her strutting song "You Know I'm No Good," had been there for a duet.
Winehouse teetered - literally, on a pair of white high heels - between intense, smoky soul numbers, such as "Love Is a Losing Game," and vampy tunes, such as "Me and Mr. Jones," in which she curses a boyfriend for not taking her to a Nas concert. But despite her unstable footing, she wooed the sold-out crowd with her scrappy London charm and a disarmingly childlike smile. She also ordered a second drink and nearly shook her bosom out of her dress on a cover of The Zutons' "Valerie." After all, a girl has a reputation.
AMY WINEHOUSE. A new breed of British soul comes to America. Seen Tuesday night at Joe's Pub, Manhattan.
