Saturday, August 12, 2006; C08

Melissa Etheridge

In a society that often heralds celebrities blindly, Melissa Etheridge looks like Mother Teresa -- if the missionary had been partial to frayed denim and could rock her followers into a frenzy. At a near-capacity DAR Constitution Hall on Thursday, Etheridge proved that a performer can simultaneously champion causes, scream her lungs out and exude a genuine warmth without smugly donning a halo.

The jagged-edged singer-songwriter stretched just over 20 songs into three amazing hours, chatting easily with her adoring audience throughout. The prevalent theme of the night was love, love, love, with a heavy life-is-short emphasis on not waiting for some intangible goal to make you happy. Etheridge's banter was moving, if unsurprising. Her 1993 coming-out might now define her more strongly than her music -- "You all know I'm gay, right?" she jokingly asked the crowd -- but it perched her as an influential speaker for gay rights. And she proudly speaks of her new role as breast-cancer survivor.

Diagnosed in 2004, Etheridge famously made her reappearance at the 2005 Grammy Awards, bellowing Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" with no sign of weakness.

Etheridge tacked that song onto the tail end of her set, preceded by "Bring Me Some Water" and "I'm the Only One" in a blazing triplet that amped the already vigorous show. She enthusiastically played all of her hits, backed by a three-piece band that included guitarist Philip Sayce, whose solos were as jaw-dropping as the headliner's energy.

-- Tricia Olszewski

In pop music, tours and new releases usually go together. So Jeremy Enigk could have been getting ahead of himself when he arrived at the Black Cat Thursday night, two months before the release of his upcoming album, "World Waits." Yet the crowd reacted familiarly to such new material as "River to Sea" and "Been Here Before." "How do you know that song?" the Seattle musician demanded at one point, but his indignation was feigned. Enigk has posted those tunes on his Myspace page.

The singer-songwriter may have embraced new delivery systems, but he hasn't dramatically remodeled his style. Although "World Waits" is only the second solo outing of Enigk's 12-year recording career, the albums he makes under his name fit neatly with his work with Sunny Day Real Estate and the Fire Theft. Some call it prog-punk: music that forgoes the most outlandish pretensions of '70s progressive rock, yet whose most dramatically yearning choruses approach that genre's faux-operatic crescendos.

"World Waits" is less ornate than 1996's "Return of the Frog Queen," and Enigk -- backed by a four-piece rock band -- did without most orchestral embellishments (save for an occasional synth-strings flourish). A few of the numbers suffered from the sparer accompaniment, and Enigk's road-weary tenor had a raspy edge, muddying the more delicate melodies. But such new songs as "City Tonight" worked just fine as moody, stripped-down rockers. With, of course, dramatically yearning choruses.

-- Mark Jenkins