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Borges nailed Doug Sahm’s “I Wanna Be Your Mama Again” on this year’s Sahm tribute Keep Your Soul, and her new full-length The Stars Are Out finds the singer in typically fine, feisty form: Borges sounds equally at-home with streamlined tough-girl pop and alt-country atmospherics, while her efficient band keeps everything tight and compressed in the manner of Rockpile or Elvis Costello & the Attractions. The Stars Are Out is more introspective than her two previous efforts, but Borges picks interesting covers from the likes of Smokey Robinson and Stephen Merritt, and she’s written a few tunes herself. She seems preoccupied with the tension between performer and audience throughout The Stars—“Do It for Free” strikes a rueful, cynical note. Still, she’s a funny, unpretentious rock ’n’ roller who continues to narrow the impossible Nick Lowe gap, as her cover of Al Anderson’s “It Comes to Me Naturally” demonstrates.
Thu., May 28, 7 p.m., 2009
Thu., May 28, 7 p.m., 2009
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