Avril: Toughie as cutie

CANADIAN star performs soaring anthems and sappy ballads with equal spunk.

The fangirls donned black shirts and skinny jeans, but Avril Lavigne came out onstage looking like she had just taken a Sunday afternoon stroll in Harajuku—red bow, blazer with pink lapels and a poofy tutu with dangling Hello Kitty heads.

The elfin singer-songwriter aptly opened her show Monday night at the Big Dome with “Hello Kitty,” a playful, if silly, electro-bubblegum pop track from her latest, modestly successful self-titled album.

To a relentless chorus of piercing shrieks, Avril worked  the stage, cooing and squealing on her studded microphone: “Come here, kitty, kitty / You’re so pretty, pretty.”

It was a baffling sight, especially for casual listeners whose most recent memory of the Canadian star’s music consists of catchy pop-punk tunes about youthful angst, delivered with spunk and bouts of brattiness.

But immediately after the peppy, cheer-leading chants of “Girlfriend,” Avril shed the frilly garb and emerged in a loose, sleeveless black tee and tight pants. Finally, she looked like the hordes of teenagers and twentysomethings who had trooped to the venue to watch her fourth concert in the country, mounted by Midas Promotions.

Punchy

Avril, who shot to global fame in 2002 after releasing her first single, “Complicated,” carried on with “Rock N Roll”—which sounded too sanitized for what its lyrics suggested, but which she sang with her signature bright and punchy vocals.

Urging the crowd to raise their fists, Avril then waxed nostalgic for high school life and “singing Radiohead at the top of our lungs” with the catchy “Here’s to Never Growing Up”—a song that may be perceived as a retort to critics panning her music’s lack of maturity. Or it could simply be a piece about her resolve to stay young at heart.

“This is who we are, I don’t think we’ll ever change (Hell, no!),” declared the singer, who at 29, remains a spitting image of her teenage self.

The concert lasted only a little more than an hour, but was packed with ditties that drove rousing sing-alongs. Culled from her five studio albums, the material on the set list was a mixed bag, from soaring anthems, trippy electronic dance beats, to sappy rock ballads.

Hello, hubby

AVRIL Lavigne performs “Hello Kitty” at the Araneta Coliseum.

Included in Avril’s repertoire were “I Always Get What I Want,” “Hush, Hush,” “Don’t Tell Me,” “Bad Girl,” “He Wasn’t” and “What the Hell.”

She performed and moved about casually; uncannily, she can look disinterested and charming at the same time. And depending on the song, Avril could be a dainty little girl, waving and striking cute poses; or appear tough, running around and kicking up a storm.

From time to time, Avril performed rock ballads, which highlighted her naturally sweet vocal tone. Although she tended to shout in the more upbeat numbers, she showed that she could be a competent live vocalist in such pieces as “Let Me Go.”

Amid the crowd’s cheering, Avril’s husband, Chad Kroeger of the rock band Nickelback, surprised everyone by going onstage for a duet with her. Chad is “a  partner who understands me and what I go through,” she recently told the Inquirer via

e-mail.

Avril dished out “Complicated,” “My Happy Ending,” “Losing Grip” and “Sk8er Boi”—arguably her most solid songs. She ended the night with “I’m With You,” while Chad recorded her performance. She delivered the angst-filled songs with the same gusto and energy that the  fans remembered—but less believably; she seems to be in a calmer place now.

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Punk-pop singer-songwriter waxed nostalgic for high school days, looking exactly like she did when she burst into the scene over a decade ago

Originally posted at 12:10 am | Thursday, February 20, 2014