Music review: Melissa Etheridge, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

NOT that she needed any excuse, but US roots rocking diva Melissa Etheridge was in town to mark the 25th anniversary of her breakthrough album Yes I Am, as notable for Etheridge’s out and proud trailblazing as it was for its music.

Melissa Etheridge. Picture: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)

Melissa Etheridge, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ***

Having booted open that door, her sexuality became the main event for quite some time but now, in her rocking fifties, she can revel in the universality of her tales of amour fou, characterised as “the direct result of some poor choices” and illustrated by the frankly stalkerish I Want to Come Over.

There was much eloquent and self-aware testifying humour in her delivery as she smartly threaded her set into a romantic (in the widest sense) narrative, coming across as a femme Springsteen, not just thematically on the celebratory All American Girl and You Used to Love to Dance’s portrait of invincible good times, but musically with the Hammond organ breakdown and Etheridge’s own fleet, propulsive rhythm guitar on the former and the latter’s sultry slow dance coda of tremolo twang.

In contrast to the free-flowing confidence of these established favourites, eliciting whoops of delight from her devoted following, Etheridge was sweetly apprehensive about premiering a new song from forthcoming album The Medicine Show. Faded By Design was a more considered overview of her growth in the years since she made her name with her passionate closing salvo of Come To My Window, blues strut I’m The Only One and rhythmic rocker Bring Me Some Water.

FIONA SHEPHERD