Cue the clap of thunder. Drums pummel like they’ve been lifted from a heavy-metal band. Electric guitars ramp up. And suddenly lang is in full-on seduction mode, with Roy Orbison’s bombast and Johnny Cash’s swagger rolled into one.
“I Confess’’ is the initial indication that lang is not up to her usual tricks on “Sing It Loud,’’ her latest album, which she recorded with a new band called the Siss Boom Bang. (They come to the Boston area this weekend for two shows: tomorrow night at the South Shore Music Circus and Sunday at the Cape Cod Melody Tent.)
At 49 and after a decade of exploring jazz and the torchier side of her talents, lang has returned with one of the year’s most dynamic pop albums. It’s another curveball from the Canadian artist who made her name with them but hasn’t delivered one in quite a while.
“It was a different challenge. It wasn’t: Bring your most spectacular, most intellectual, most crafted essence to the game,’’ lang says recently, barefoot and relaxed in her dressing room at the Beacon Theatre, where she would perform later in the evening. “It was: Be real, have fun, listen, and give it your all. That’s what we all did.’’
Lang says before writing the record, she and Joe Pisapia, her new musical director and bandmate, sat down and made a manifesto. They wanted “Sing It Loud’’ to be soulful, direct, and unpretentious; the songs should just naturally flow.
“We knew we weren’t going to come up with the most clever songwriting or reinvent a new genre. We didn’t care about that,’’ lang says. “When I sought out someone like Joe, I wanted to have a record that came from the world of Neil Young.’’
Pisapia, who had been a member of the Boston-bred pop band Guster before leaving to work with lang, began the collaboration simply enough - with a conversation. At their initial meeting at Pisapia’s house in Nashville, where they also recorded the album in his studio, he asked lang a casual but crucial question: What are you about after all this time?
