Take a 'Drag': Lang Smokes in Symphony Hall

In the world of rock concerts, audiences basically come in two flavors: really enthusiastic or really mellow. If a singer's smart, she'll respond to the atmosphere by playing off the signals she receives and tailor her own behavior to the mood she picks up from the crowd.

A singer must expect a raucous night ahead when she gets a standing ovation just for walking onstage. k.d. lang took it all in stride, though, when she crossed the stage of Symphony Hall and caught her first glimpse of an explosively enthusiastic and entirely unseated audience. lang launched almost immediately into her first number, a bluesy Willard Robison song called "Don't Smoke in Bed," whose admonition she has called "another way of saying 'Don't dare sleep with anyone else.'"

Smoking is a theme that lang uses throughout her new album, Drag, to explore sex and love in a variety of contexts, including possessiveness, as in "Don't Smoke in Bed," and macho bravado, as in Steve Miller's "The Joker." In fact, if neither of these songs had audience members lusting for their Parliaments, perhaps any one of the other 10 covers on Drag, including "Smoke Dreams," "Love is Like a Cigarette," and "My Old Addiction," did the trick.

On a deeper level, though, lang's concentration on the smoking metaphor highlighted the show's Flapperesque appeal, recalling a time when cigarettes were a sign of a woman's subtle sexiness and when showmanship was the thing. On "The Joker," for instance, lang infused Miller's swaggeringly boastful lyrics with an ironic new meaning, as her flirtations and suggestive smiles elicited cheers from females in the audience. In perhaps the most moving of Drag's songs, "My Old Addiction," lang's voice and the piano were in perfect harmony, and the husky delivery made every line sound reverential. This was especially the case because the song itself had such dramatic imagery: "if the swan can have a song," lang breathed, "I think I know that tune."

The backdrop of Symphony Hall also lent a classic, almost gothic feel to the proceedings, with its black and red drapery, gold trim and metal-studded leather seats. lang walked the stage in her trademark black pinstripes like she was on Star Search, feeding off the audience's love and enthusiasm and maintaining a constant dialogue with its members. Like singers from the '20s who preceded her in loungey style, she synchronized fluid and natural movements with the simplicity and steadiness of her own voice. Even while delivering what must have been vocally straining performances, she managed to maintain an ease and comfort in her demeanor that, from the beginning of her career, completely set her apart from singers less mature in their craft.

Besides being able to lend an original feel to old songs, k.d. lang was a master at remaining a real person onstage. During parts of songs when her backup musicians play solo, she gave them her head-swaying, toe-tapping attention. When her fans called out "I love you" during a standing ovation, she responded, "It's mutual." She often let the music get the best of her and improvised dances across the stage. During a rendition of "Miss Chatelaine" from her Ingenue album, lang put the mike down just long enough to do a combination merengue-chacha, to the delight of the audience. Perhaps most indicative of her all-around goodness as a person was her practice of introducing each musician by name, along with a personal anecdote about each and an offering of her own sincere appreciation. "He survived Lilith Fair," she teasingly remarked about guitarist Kevin Breit. "I don't think I could've gotten through that--for one reason or another." Wink wink.

Which brings us to another point: sexual innuendoes. After teasing one of her backup vocalists, lang remarked, "I know I'm going to get it after the show." Wink wink. The audience almost went into contortions over that one.

But by far the highlight of the evening was reliving old favorites, and lang didn't disappoint in this arena either. After a rendition of "Wash Me Clean," a song about "tarnished dreams," lang joked, "I promised that, no matter how tough things got, we would never sell that song to a detergent company!" Her description of the distance between two lovers in Chris Isaak's "Western Stars," from her country album Shadowlands, was also magnificent. But the audience's unquestionable favorite was her version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," in which she lamented at what seems sometimes to be a universal female condition: "I love you even more/than I did before/Oh darling what can I do/Now you're over me/And I'll always be/Crying over you."

Not surprisingly, the evening ended with two encores, featuring what are arguably the best songs in lang's repertoire, including, of course, the self-described "medley of my hit," "Constant Craving." In a fantastic piece of theater, lang followed "Constant Craving" with Patsy Cline's "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray," which she sang while sitting at a cafe table brought in especially for that song. But most moving of all was "Infinite and Unforeseen," a song about finding love in the most obvious of places and finding home in one's own backyard. She prefaced this climactic performance with a dedication to "friends and lovers who are dying everyday." "In this world," she said, "where we live as profoundly or as unprofoundly as we do...it is obvious that it boils down to one simple truth, and that is simply love."

Trite or touching, lang's message wasn't lost on her audience members, who left decidedly more mellow than when they had entered. lang's metaphors had also come full circle by the conclusion of the evening, and no longer evoked the same images of mystery and innuendo. In one of her last songs of the evening, "The Air that I Breathe," she instead described the gentleness of a longer relationship.

"If I could make a wish," she sang, "I think I'd pass/Can't think of anything I need/No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound... Making love with you has left me/Peaceful, warm and tired/What more could I ask?/There's nothing to be desired/Sometimes all I need is the air that I breathe/And to love you."