Caillat’s performance plays like a hard sell

October 13, 2009|Marc Hirsh, Globe Correspondent

Before Colbie Caillat or her band even took the Orpheum stage Sunday came a video game commercial that featured her singing “Bubbly.’’ Besides pushing the biggest hit of her short career right out front, it also cast Caillat as someone working to sell her audience something.

She came on stage and kept peddling. (She would also return to “Bubbly’’ as her final song.) She mentioned her new album by name at least three times, as though worried the crowd would forget. And it may have been good-natured ribbing when she pointed out that her stage manager was wearing the women’s model of her tour T-shirt. But when he came out one song later wearing the men’s version, it felt like he was showing off the merchandise available in the lobby.

That may not have been the intent, but there were countless moments that felt fake. Every note of every uncomplicated beach-resort song seemed meticulously placed, without an inch of room to breathe. Caillat goaded her stage manager into singing “No Woman, No Cry’’ and her bassist into a dance that was embarrassing to watch. Even the most apparently spontaneous moment, involving a man in the balcony reminding her that he had once given her a bracelet in the Bahamas, felt pre-planned.

Caillat isn’t an especially polished performer. She has a serviceably warm voice that she constantly pushed against the bottom of her range and a stage presence more dutiful than easygoing. She talked far too much, routinely overexplaining her songs - the message behind “Fearless,’’ apparently, is “be fearless’’ - and delivering middleschool-assembly empowerment platitudes.

Opener Trevor Hall wedded a ludicrous affected Caribbean accent (absent from his chitchat) to collegiate coffeehouse folk, leaving any semblance of dynamism to the busy slappings of his percussionist. Aided by guitarist Jay Clifford and the clearest sound mix of any act on the bill, Howie Day followed with a voice and songs that echoed Neil Finn, making him Crowded House without the crowd.

COLBIE CAILLAT
With Howie Day and Trevor Hall
At: the Orpheum, Sunday