.Live Review: Nellie McKay at the Mystic Theatre

I guess the best way to describe Nellie McKay’s show last night is this: in one minute, she pounded the hell out of her keyboard and screamed into the microphone, “Die, motherfucker, die!!” And in the next minute, she picked up a tiny ukelele and sang a beautiful, you-can-hear-a-pin-drop version of the jazz standard, “If I Had You.”
To a half-full house, Nellie McKay thrilled the Mystic Theater with a firestorm show of original songs from all ends of the spectrum, proving herself yet again as one of the craziest and talented songwriters around today. But it was McKay’s selection of cover songs that offset her quirky material in perfect fashion. “Feed the Birds,” from Mary Poppins, was sung in an amazingly authentic old-British-lady voice, along with “I Love to Laugh,” from the same soundtrack.
After her own topical songs about gay marriage, animal rights and feminism, McKay turned to the crowd and announced, “Here’s a song about illegal immigration!”
The song? “Don’t Fence Me In.”
In a similar sly maneuver, McKay performed the old Ella Fitzgerald tune “Vote for Mr. Rhythm,” with the lines: “Vote for Mr. Rhythm / Let freedom ring / Then we’ll all be singing / Of thee I swing.” This led into a mild he’ll-have-to-do endorsement of Obama—which then mutated into a ferociously passionate endorsement of Ralph Nader (??!). McKay even gyrated with mock lust when she described talking to Nader on the phone, and went on and on about how he’s full of great ideas, and sort of, like, failed to mention his overshadowing legacy to this country of viciously crippling the Democratic Party in the most important election ever. “Oh. Hey!” McKay exclaimed, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Does anyone here have chipmunks?”
As those who’ve seen her before can attest, McKay is plainly talented. . . and firmly sardonic about it. At one point, the crowd began hooting at a particularly flashy piano solo. “Oh, I’m just faking it!” McKay protested, and then went into a series of famous piano quotes—“Für Elise,” “Take the A Train”—to demonstrate? To refute? Who can tell?
Dressed in a red tasseled flapper dress and playing a Roland keyboard, McKay also told the crowd a long story—in a zombie voice, no less—about her grandma who used to drive up from the armpit of the Bay Area known as Milpitas after it took that title from Pacifica to come to Petaluma to sell Tupperware to ladies in Petaluma and she’d drive her Ford Galaxie which ran so smooth you could balance a dime on the hood and it was the same car her mom would drive years later when she was on acid and it was a great car but the terrible thing is that when her grandma left the ladies from Petaluma said they’d send her the money for the Tupperware but then they never did.
McKay’s own material, like set opener “Ding Dong” and encore “Clonie,” was brilliant as always. “Mother of Pearl,” with its 5,000 tongues in cheek about feminists not having a sense of humor, brought the house down, and “Work Song” turned into a three-part audience sing-along at the end. Nice also to hear “I Wanna Get Married,” previously discussed as a possible Gertrude Niesen tribute, and probably my favorite Nellie McKay song of all time, “Manhattan Avenue.”
Nellie McKay plays this Saturday at the Outside Lands Fetsival; be sure to haul ass from the Lupe Fiasco stage to catch her set.