On his first night on a U.S. stage after almost a month touring Europe, soul singer Charles Bradley launched a tour as headliner Saturday night (April 23) that will see him playing large theaters in support of his new LP, Changes. A nearly full house waited patiently through a set by Belgian singer Selah Sue, whose melange of contemporary soul and rap elements (a multi-platinum success in Europe) made an odd pairing with Bradley’s decidedly retro soul material. But as soon as he took the stage, the clock was effectively reset.
After a mood-setting intro from his seven-piece band, Bradley strutted out in a wine-colored suit that looked from a distance like leather. Going straight for the crowd’s sympathy, he started with “Heartaches and Pain,” one of many songs tonight employing his high, pained wail. The scream seemed effortless.
Greeting the audience after that opener with his customary “ladies and gentlemens,” the singer avoided small talk for most of the rest of the set, singing with his eyes squinted closed as if the crowd might not exist. He connected with fans visually only when he stepped back from the mic for a dance move: a dramatic wing-flap motion (he is, after all, the “Screaming Eagle of Soul”), a bit of hip-shaking, a robot-mime bend at the hip. Those who know Bradley started as a James Brown impersonator might have expected more fancy footwork than they got here, but he did deliver some hip-grinding action on a cover of Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” (Sadly, he didn’t do as so many performers have this week and throw a Prince cover into the set.)
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More often, Bradley’s material here owed much more to the Stax Records legacy than to JB funk: Even when he covers (of all people) Black Sabbath on his new disc’s title track — a song he says is deeply personal, reminding him of “my late mama” — he makes it sound like a lament Otis Redding might have recorded.
Bradley’s band enjoyed nudging him from time to time, emphasizing the hard psychedelic elements of “Confusion.” But however many numbers he sang about loss and worry, Bradley’s heart seemed to be in the love songs: He was most animated when singing “You Put the Flame On It,” from his previous LP Victim of Love; though a close runner-up was “Ain’t It a Sin,” in which he’d deliver a menacing line like “if you ain’t gonna do me right / I might just do you in,” and then give a shrug as if to say that’s just the way things go.
Bradley set play-acting showmanship aside after his last tune, speaking earnestly but not awkwardly about religious faith and global fellowship. He threw long-stemmed roses into the crowd one-by-one, saving the last as a symbolic gift for those so far back he couldn’t reach them. They might not get a flower, he reassured them, but they had his love: “Look in your heart, and you will always find me.”