Underwood performs well, but reveals little of herself

Country music star Carrie Underwood performs to a sold-out crowd Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

It’s not nice to hurl rocks at kittens.

And yet, whipping a hunk of granite at some cute, cuddly little ball of fur seems almost polite compared to taking issue with Carrie Underwood.

She’s so likeable, she’s the inverse of a music critic.

Beautiful, talented, earnest and unspoiled, Underwood could make a cherub seem like a pornographer by comparison.

But watching her perform, fun as it may be, is like eating cotton candy for dinner: enjoyable for its sweetness and sugar buzz, but ultimately, full of empty calories, devoid of any real nourishment.

As Underwood’s show at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on Saturday underscored, her repertoire is as pro forma as country music gets, a grocery list of genre staples.

Rollicking tune about drinking too much tequila and doing regrettable things?

Check. (“Last Name”)

Expected display of piousness?

Check. (“Jesus Take the Wheel”)

Requisite Jimmy Buffett-esque ode to telling boss man to stick it and then getting away from it all?

Check. (“One Way Ticket”)

Song about love gone bad?

Check times 10 (“Undo It,” “Wasted,” a cover of Randy Travis’ “I Told You So,” etc.)

Through it all, Underwood seems less like her own person than what might result from some record company marketing executive rubbing a genie lamp and being granted the wish of the perfect country princess to sell to the masses.

But here’s the thing.

Despite the prefab, paint-by-numbers nature of much of her catalog, Underwood is still a pleasure to behold live.

She has little to say, but she says it so invitingly, with so much conviction, that it’s hard to begrudge her for it.

To be taken seriously as an artist, you’re expected to challenge orthodoxy, advance the form, push things forward.

Underwood, however, seeks to perfect country convention, polish it, until it gleams like her smile, whose luminescence rivals that of a solar flare.

To this end, she often succeeds.

It all begins with her voice, which is a thing of unvarnished beauty and natural, unforced power. She often sings with the brassy gusto of an R&B diva, with much more soulfulness than many of her country contemporaries.

At times, she delivered the tunes from her gut, like she did on the banjo-powered arena rock stomp of “Last Name,” her voice as gritty as the dirt road she was seen running down during an intro video played prior to her emerging onto the stage.

At others, she favored more subtle tones, such as on “Temporary Home,” where the packed arena fell silent in deference to the near-falsetto lilt Underwood employed.

She was at her best, though, when at her most bombastic, such as on a fiddle-fired “Flat on the Floor,” raucous hoedown “Leave Love Alone,” which opened with some swamp blues guitar licks, and at the end of “Jesus Take the Wheel,” where she held onto a high note like a kid gripping her mother’s leg, getting the crowd, who remained seated most of the show, up on their feet in approval.

Despite how impressively these songs were executed though, there often felt like a disconnect between Underwood’s words and the woman onstage actually singing them.

When someone like, say, Miranda Lambert sings of getting revenge on a no-good ex, shotgun in hand, it just feels more convincing than when Underwood talks of going after some two-timer’s truck with a baseball bat or when she adopts an ill-fitting party girl persona.

It feels as if she’s playing a role, revealing little of herself, always living up to someone else’s standards, at least in song.

That she’s such an accomplished performer ultimately wins the day, though it would be nice if we could actually get to know the woman behind the cosmopolitan glow.

“Take off all the makeup, girl / Shine your light, show the world,” Underwood sang on “Nobody Ever Told You,” performing on a platform with a few band members suspended above the crowd. “Don’t be shy, don’t be scared / You don’t have to hide under there.”

Good advice.

She should heed it.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin
@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.