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TORONTO - So Avril Lavigne's a blonde again. With curls, even. This makes her grown-up, glamourous, some would say.
The Canadian singing star was indeed looking beautiful at Air Canada Centre last night for the Toronto stop of her summer "Bonez" tour.
Gone were the skinny ties, baggy pants and heavy eyeliner that once defined her, and mall rats everywhere. Not to say that look isn't beautiful, too. But for a magazine cover girl, it's just sooo 2002-2004.
Yet softer make-up and a flowy skirt doesn't necessarily mean Avril has matured. She's still sporting sneakers, after all. And judging by the hit-and-miss performance, the 20-year-old from Napanee, Ont., is still trying to figure out how to evolve from teen pop princess to, well, something else.
Hey, at least she's not having a skanky phase.
Avril's 90-minute set covered most of the material from her two chart-topping albums, 2001's Let Go and last year's Under My Skin. The production was bare "bonez" -- no theatrical sets or back-up dancers here. (The most effective lighting was the sea of glow-sticks and light-up devil horns in the audience -- purchased by many parents for $8-$15 a pop.)
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And if the show didn't quite get the full house of families onto its feet much, it sure inspired plenty of squealing from the young 'uns.
Avril's audience remains teen and pre-teen girls, which she plays to like a chipper Mouseketeer. She's sassy, not sophisticated. Her laissez-faire stage moves consisted of stomping, prancing and the occasional twirl.
"Are you ready to rock out tonight?" she shouted early on, but there was little real rocking to be had.
Yes, Avril played electric guitar (the strap had skulls on it), but it was more a prop than a real presence in the sound mix. Sure, I Always Get What I Want was bratty pop punk, but Disneyfied. Even her signature single Sk8ter Boi didn't pack a punch.
Whenever the high-energy numbers kicked in, Avril lacked the vocal attitude to make them work the way a real rocker would, although she did deliver the occasional bad word in her lyrics.
Where the singer did shine was on the simple ballads. On I'm With You and Tomorrow, she was comfortable and composed, slipping into the slight countrified tone that really suits her and sets her apart. This is where she could find her forever voice. Once she has something worth saying to grown-ups, that is.
Even Avril's newer material, songs like My Happy Ending, Don't Tell Me and Forgotten are still just entries in her "Princess Diaries: Adolescent Confessionals" about boys and independence, mostly. Maybe the upcoming marriage to sum 41 singer Deryck Whibley will provide some new adult themes (her engagement rock sparkled in the video screen close ups). But this is one young talent that will never described as wise beyond her years.
Before the standard encore (a cover of Blur's Song 2, with Avril bashing away on the drum kit, followed by her breakout hit Complicated), the band launched into Green Day's American Idiot.
While not exactly powerful, it was a surprisingly popular with the youngest in the crowd, who sang along to every word.
Avril, you can grow up now, your work as the gateway to punk rock for a whole new generation is done.
What she played:
Losing My Grip
Unwanted
I Always Get What I Want
My Happy Ending
Mobile
I'm With You
Fall to Pieces
I'll Never Say
Sk8ter Boi
Don't Tell Me
Nobody's Home
Take Me Away
Together
Forgotten
Tomorrow
Nobody's Home (solo)
He Wasn't
American Idiot
Song 2
Complicated
Encores:
Song 2