Lily languishes in limelight

Lily Allen
Venue: Sound Academy
Rating: ** 1/2

The limelight has long been a bedfellow to Lily Allen.

The popularly boisterous Brit has topped tabloid headlines for her hard partying ways and recently for a photo-selling feud with the New York Times. But her public outspokenness is appropriately underscored in the lyrics to the songs on her newest release, It’s Not Me, It’s You.

From lambasting the denial of drug use and its dispersion (both prescription and non-) on Everyone’s At It, to the less obscurely scathing song F*** You, Allen doesn’t hide from the fact that she has beef and she’s not afraid to tell you all about it.

Her raucous reputation preceding her, Allen took the stage of Toronto’s Sound Academy Wednesday night for the final performance and only Canadian date of her North American tour. The all-ages show saw a sundry crowd chock full of neo-hipster tweens to the front and more conservative 20- and 30-somethings to the rear.

Danceable Seattle synth-poppers and nominees for greatest ever band name featuring a celebrity and her coiffure, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, set the stage for Allen with a smattering of nod-provoking electronic beats.

After a teasing blue spotlight shone intermittently on the draped white sheet that acted as backdrop to the opening band, the house lights went low and a jarring strobe shone from behind the sheet, revealing silhouettes of Allen’s backing band, to mass acclaim.

When the sheet dropped, giant white letters spelling “Lily” graced the stage behind the band and Allen surfaced donning medium-length black hair to match her tight black knee-length dress and black-and-white patterned hooded jumper. Opening with toned down album opener Everyone’s At It, a hooded Allen jumped frantically about the stage, urging the crowd to join in.

Following performances of electronic track-backed I Could Say and the lighter, poppy Never Gonna Happen, Allen quipped, “Please join me in an alcoholic beverage. It’s that time of week, for shizzle!” leading into a ska-heavy performance of Mark Ronson-orchestrated Kaiser Chiefs cover Oh My God, which segued into Alright, Still album favourite Everything’s Just Wonderful.

Upon the conclusion of Who’d Have Known, it’s clear any exploration of Allen’s vocal range would only be through routine “ahhh”s, “ba ba ba”s and other nonsense syllables that seemed to pop up in every song. Fisting a plastic beer cup, Allen continued to down drinks and even lit up a cigarette during Smile, stealing drags when she let the audience carry choice song lyrics.

Perhaps the combination of cigarette smoke and later emergence of Allen’s puffer explains her languid stage movements throughout, pacing from stage left to right with little more than finger points to the audience.

That’s until her triple encore, when she returned to the stage, clad in a white t-shirt and blue jeans to bust out debut album single Smile and INMIY lead single The Fear. Finally, Allen spiritedly explored the stage, squatting sultrily while singing to a cover of Britney Spears hit Womanizer; the song that occasioned the greatest response from a then dwindling crowd.

Lily Allen may savour the limelight, but in light of the rather casual showing, it might be chalked up more to her tendencies than her tunes.