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OTTAWA - She really should have been the headliner, but the sun was still shining brightly when Nelly Furtado took the Ottawa Bluesfest main stage to open for the more serious, spiritual likes of Live last night.
After all, who could have predicted Furtado's third album, the provocatively titled and marketed Loose, would explode in North America and the U.K? Reception to 2003's Folklore was lukewarm at best, and there is no way fans or concert bookers could have known the wunderkind who exploded onto the scene in 2001 would have such sexy tricks up her sleeve.
And it is a little hard to imagine the crowd readjusting from a reflective band like Live to Furtado's pop-folk if things had been reversed.
Though she seems to be wearing nothing but tank tops and hot pants these days, it was a relatively demure Furtado, in a knee-length blue dress, who took the stage in front of a jam-packed crowd.
Instead, two sexy backup dancers -- a man and a woman -- were the ones showing some skin.
Rapping producer Timbaland --who helped Furtado give birth to the questionable, uneven hit Promiscuous -- may have filled in for dates on Saturday Night Live and the like, but when it comes to playing Ottawa it was up to boistrous talent Saukrates to fill his shoes admirably.
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Though she still does little but walk back and forth in a variety of prances and struts, Furtado seemed much more comfortable on stage last night than in last appearances.
Her clear, strong voice soared on a traditional version of Forca, the theme penned for the 2003 Euro Cup. She and the group also did a nice job of rearranging some of her other well-known songs to make them new for the crowd. That included giving breakthrough hit I'm Like A Bird a relaxed treatment; funking up Turn Out the Light and turning in a percussion-heavy version of the joyous tune Powerless (Say What You Want).
Live did a great job of bringing the night home, fusing new tunes from their solid recent release Songs From Black Mountain with much-loved anthems from their most significant effort, 1994's Throwing Copper. Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk held the crowd while borrowing heavily from the new album, most notably the lyrical The River and show opener Mystery. He even threw in a version of Johnny Cash's Walk The Line. But it was Live's most plaintive older tunes, like the agonizing I Alone, the somber Lightning Crashes and revved-up All Over You that left the most impact in the end.