I just came across this.. better late than never

Robert

The most unexpected thing for this first-time attendee at a Tift Merritt show was finding a common ground between the Grammy-nominated darling of the alt-country set and Rick James's sultry protege Teena Marie. Both are diminutive divas with big (and, literally, tall) shoes to fill, and both have no trouble restyling the vestments of timeworn musical genres.

And Merritt, who finished a two-night stand at the Birchmere bandstand on Saturday, knocked any remaining stereotypes of country music onto their Nudie-clad derrieres with the twin weapons of rock and soul. Not that she didn't do a decent job with out-and-out weepers, such as "Bramble Rose," the title track of her first album. But "I Am Your Tambourine," from last year's "Tambourine," showed her strengths as she strutted like some strangely winning amalgam of Mick Jagger and Britney Spears, smacked that bike-tire-size tambourine over her head and sexed up the place with her slightly breathy, pleading wails. In "Late Night Pilgrim," when she declared, "You'll get dirty before you get clean," she offered, if not the voice of experience, at least one that suggested its more tantalizing possibilities.

Her band blended an assertive rhythm section -- the sort that both begs the audience to clap and renders it superfluous -- with keyboards and guitars that clearly preferred last century's rock to this century's country. Guitarist Brad Rice even rocked out like Santana -- and looked like Jack White.

Merritt struck a fine balance between the unbridled vocalizing that kept Janis Joplin in throat toddies and the overly manicured singing favored by mainstream-country fans. And if her entertainment skills sometimes outpaced such subtleties as emotional depth or perfect pitch? Well, she lost that Grammy to Loretta Lynn, which puts her in fine -- and perhaps appropriate -- company.