Teardrops on Her Pillow? Not for This Torch Singer

A defiant rock edge: Lina Koutrakos at the Metropolitan Room.

The singer Lina Koutrakos deconstructs the oldest cabaret cliché in the book in “Torch,” her sagacious new show at the Metropolitan Room. If that loaded title conjures images of a lovelorn diva masochistically wallowing in mistreatment and rejection, Ms. Koutrakos is anything but a self-pitying crybaby.

As she sang “The Man That Got Away” on Friday evening, she didn’t beckon you to follow her down a yellow-brick road to a tear-soaked bunker stocked with razor blades and sleeping pills. The song became a resigned, dry-eyed assessment of male inconstancy as an unfortunate fact of life that has existed “ever since the world began.”

Dry-eyed, I hasten to add, doesn’t mean unemotional or un-dramatic. In her heated interpretations of classic torch songs sensitively accompanied on piano by Rick Jensen, Ms. Koutrakos implies that the war between Venus and Mars may have reached a stalemate.

Her emotional strength is embedded in singing that has a defiant rock edge. Ms. Koutrakos resembles Patti LuPone in certain vocal mannerisms and a two-fisted dramatic approach. Both revel in combative sturm und drang; both project unlimited reserves of willpower. For Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s “You Fascinate Me So,” a song that most female singers treat as a coy flirtatious come-on, Ms. Koutrakos delivered the blunt invitation of a sexual aggressor. In her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc,” purity is trumped by desire.

Musing on why so few torch songs are written and sung by men, Ms. Koutrakos suggested that “Night Moves,” Bob Seger’s cry of middle-aged nostalgia for his hormonal glory days, might be an archetypal male torch song.

“Torch,” which has two more performances, dramatically crests with back-to-back renditions of the Persuaders’ 1971 hit, “Thin Line Between Love and Hate” and the Billie Holiday standard “Don’t Explain.” Both ballads describe women who suffer in silence when their unfaithful husbands or lovers come home in the wee hours.

“Thin Line,” unlike “Don’t Explain,” anticipates the moment when suppressed rage explodes into violence. Its message that “the sweetest woman in the world/can be the meanest woman in the world/if you make her that way” stands as a warning.

Lina Koutrakos’s “Torch” repeats on Friday and Saturday at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street, Flatiron district; (212) 206-0440, metropolitanroom.com.

 

 

Warm the cognac. Get comfortable. When you listen to Lina Koutrakos’s CD, Torch, prepare for an experience that is both musically beautiful and extraordinarily sensual. This collection of “torch” songs is sometimes sad, never whiny, sometimes even funny, and consistently able to reach the heart. In the Koutrakos version, “It Had to Be You” is no piano bar chestnut—it‘s a reflection on what compels us in love. There’s no belting in “The Man That Got Away.” It’s about a tough night. She is too smart to make it show-bizzy. “You Fascinate Me So” is sexy fun. Her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc” is a moving journey about being consumed by passion… any passion, be it God, love, or fire itself. The voice is supple and warm. Too many singers who, like Koutrakos, made their bones in rock, cross that line from loose to sloppy but she never does. The vocals are easy and languid while the words and stories remain Swarovski-clear. Rick Jensen’s accompaniment is just right. Along with Jensen, producer Jean-Pierre Perreaux makes the correct call in sticking with piano accompaniment. Torchsucceeded as live cabaret, but shows don’t necessarily translate into engaging recordings. Yet, even without the visual contributions of movement and expression, Torch, the CD, warms the soul and the senses.

Carla Gordon
Cabaret Scenes
March 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org