Eden White: Lilith-pop comes to music center

by Seth Rogovoy

(LENOX, Mass., Aug 09, 1998) -- Fresh from her recent appearance at New York's LilithFair, singer-songwriter and bandleader Eden White ushered in the National Music Foundation's New Artist Series at the organization's newly renovated Centre Stage theater with a lively program of her original, LilithFair-style pop-rock.

Leading her youthful six-piece band from New York, White was a vibrant, engaging and resourceful performer, able to channel and focus her abundance of natural talents. These apparently include her expressive vocals, a gift for crafting catchy melodies, a command of several keyboard idioms and styles and an ability to put forth her original material with a sense of conviction belying her relative inexperience as a club performer.

White's material fits comfortably into the emerging genre of commercial female music that embraces LilithFair artists including Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole and Mary Chapin Carpenter. What White brings to the menu is a piano-based approach in a world that favors acoustic guitars although she doubles on that instrument quite ably, and plays it on some of her best songs, including "This Is the Way," the title track to her new CD, and a good bet to be her first hit single.

On keyboard-centered numbers, White's music draws on deeper roots than the flavor of the moment, variously recalling Tori Amos, Bruce Hornsby, Jane Siberry, Billy Joel and Elton John. Like Joel, she composes mini-song-suites, with dramatic tempo changes, as on "Here I Am" and "Song For You," both of which boasted enough attitude to justify the jarring musical leaps. And occasionally she lets her rock 'n' roll roots show through, with some Jerry Lee Lewis-style honky-tonk riffs, perhaps learned second-hand from Elton John, perhaps not.

In spite of White's gift for catchy melodies and song forms, it still remains to be seen if she has the creative power to come up with something distinctive, edgy or original enough to separate her from the LilithFair pack. Ultimately, this is a question of character, which is an essential element of the singer-songwriter makeup.

White's performance was also the first nightclub-style show at the venue, with a few hundred attendees seated around tables and in chairs around the edges of the room. For a first outing, the presentation was a qualified success, but much more needs to be done to make the atmosphere in the room more casual and welcoming and less institutional less like a school assembly. There is a way to encourage more mixing and socializing among the crowd without detracting from the music one iota. Let's hope they find it.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on August 09, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]