Stevie Nicks, Pretenders shimmer at new Park Theater
The venue was christened with a double take, an old pro regaled by the new.
“Look, it’s us,” The Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde marveled as she gazed at 20-foot-tall versions of herself and her bandmates, her voice a mix of awe and amusement as she gawked at the video screens bookending the stage and doubling as massive mirrors as they played.
“Are you looking at us?” Hynde asked a bit later, wondering aloud whether the flesh-and-blood version of her band could compete with the pixilated incarnation.
Granted, the question was a loaded one.
Earlier, Hynde had admonished a mobile device-wielding crowd member.
“Put your phone away,” she commanded during a stormy “I’ll Stand By You.”
“We’re a rock band, and we want you to be with us,” she explained afterward. “It’s distracting.”
Hynde blamed the disturbance on what she perceived to be an undue preoccupation with social media, two words that she spat out as if they were coated in something foul, like battery acid or, even worse, modernity.
Now, we won’t brand Hynde a technophobe, it’s just that she favors the visceral and the earthy over the digital and the lavish.
So it really says something that even Hynde was a bit dazzled by her surroundings as The Pretenders were the first band to take the gargantuan stage at the new Park Theater at Monte Carlo on Saturday, opening for Stevie Nicks on her “24 Karat Gold Tour.”
Nicks’ latest outing was an ideal thematic fit for the Park Theater’s debut: The tour is named after her latest album, “24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault,” a collection of previously unreleased songs from throughout Nicks’ career, some of which went back four decades. For most of these tunes, Nicks explained their origins, creating a storyteller vibe that lent a casual intimacy to the evening.
The Park Theater seemed designed for such an occasion.
With its huge, stadium-sized stage, high-resolution projectors and towering video screens, the $90 million theater, with a maximum capacity ranging from 5,200 to 6,300 depending on the configuration, is all about making a fairly large room feel small.
Nicks did her part to further shrink the distance between audience and performer with between-song ruminations akin to a friend telling you about her day over tea — or, in the case of some in this audience, a colossal 30-ounce beer.
For “Belle Fleur,” a song about the trappings of celebrity dating back to the recording sessions for Nicks’ 1981 solo debut “Bella Donna,” Nicks recounted the thrill of being picked up in a limo for her first Fleetwood Mac gig, finally being able to quit her waitress and cleaning gigs and ditch her Toyota Corolla. Prior to the martial stomp of “Starshine,” she recalled the time she played an early version of the song for Tom Petty in his basement, mimicking his Floridian drawl when recollecting his approval. Before the Buckingham Nicks chestnut “Crying in the Night,” she counted back the years to the song’s birth, all 43 of them.
In the case of all these “24 Karat Gold” tunes, Nicks was performing them live on tour for the first time. Same for the playful, yet poignant swing of “New Orleans,” and the haunting, beatific ballad ”Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” a song inspired by the “Twilight” book and film series, where Nicks’ voice pierced the tune like a knife burrowing into flesh.
These rarities alternated with Nicks’ solo hits and Fleetwood Mac favorites: a lithe, frolicsome “Gypsy,” a brooding, cold-blooded “Gold Dust Woman,” which eventually built into a raga-like rhythmic intensity, a full-throated “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” where Nicks was joined by Hynde, who helped sing the parts of the song originally voiced by Tom Petty.
“She’s crazy, but we like her,” Nicks, 68, said of Hynde, 65, afterward, one of the most enduring female voices in rock ‘n’ roll saluting another.
Hynde did some saluting as well during The Pretenders’ invigorated set.
“It’s still the best, isn’t it? A band,” she beamed after a hard-nosed “Middle of the Road.”
Surrounded by the high-tech fruits of a digital age, her point was that the comparatively low-watt thrills of a group of musicians jamming together for kicks can still carry the day, her message every bit as clear and sharply focused as the images pulsating on the screens around her.
Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com and follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.
REVIEW
Who: Stevie Nicks, with The Pretenders
When: Saturday
Where: Park Theater at the Monte Carlo
Grade: B+
