Nicole Atkins Bares Her Soul at The Rubin Museum

August 9, 2016 by

Friday, August 5, 2016 marked Nicole Atkins’ fifth visit to The Rubin Museum’s Naked Soul Series. As much as Brooklyn Roads enjoyed her December 2014 show there, she appeared to be more relaxed and delightfully chattier this time around, while her voice sounded as strong and evocative as ever.

Nicole Press Pic_08-08-16

Nicole Atkins/photo courtesy of Girlie Action Media

Atkins performed a generous 14-song set that wove material from her first three albums with new songs from a fourth album she is currently working on (for which she has just launched a Pledge Music campaign). Accompanied throughout the evening only by pianist Dave “Moose” Sherman, she opened, appropriately, with “Neptune City,” the mixed-emotion tribute to her home town that first caught the attention of radio program directors. After strong renditions of “War Is Hell,” “Love Surreal” and “Who Killed the Moonlight,” Atkins launched into a trio of new songs, beginning with “A Little Crazy,” a moving heart-breaking love-gone-wrong ballad she co-wrote with Chris Isaak. “This is what the new album should sound like,” she told the audience.

Slow Phaser album cover

Nicole Atkins-Slow Phaser -album art

The Naked Soul Series asks performers to select three of the Tibetan art-focused museum’s pieces, projected on a screen at the back of the stage, and tie each of them into a song. The best of these was “Above As Below,” the haunting closing track from her current album, Slow Phaser, sung by Atkins as Mahakala, the Hindu god of death, loomed behind her.

Other highlights included “Cool People,” for which she coaxed the crowd into singing the title refrain, and a new tune she wrote with Sherman, “I Love Living Here Even When I Don’t.” We couldn’t help thinking that the latter might have been inspired, in part at least, by her 10-plus years living in Brooklyn. (She wrote most of her first three albums here and recorded all of Mondo Amore at Seaside Lounge in Park Slope).

Atkins closed the evening by covering Roy Orbison, an artist to whom she has been compared. She deftly managed to make “In Dreams” all her own while remaining faithful to the original. She had originally planned to end with the Beach Boys’ “Surf’s Up,” but felt she and Sherman hadn’t had time to properly rehearse the complex Brian Wilson – Van Dyke Parks opus. “Too many words,” she joked. We look forward to hearing this at a future concert or, perhaps, on her forthcoming album.