Review: Carly Rae Jepsen at House of Blues

The music business will, on occasion, reveal a fissure between art and commerce.

One such chasm was on display Friday night at the House of Blues, as Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen performed all of her superb third studio album, Emotion, for a crowd that was small in number but large in spirit. (The balcony was closed at House of Blues, which is the first time in my memory I can remember such a thing happening for a concert.)

The art being showcased — Jepsen’s deft evocation of Reagan-era musical textures and moods, in a moment where much of pop music is infatuated with such sounds — was possible because of the commerce, specifically Jepsen’s multi-platinum single Call Me Maybe.

That sunny, happy earworm was such a monster success that Jepsen could effectively write her own ticket after her 2012 sophomore album, Kiss, which featured Maybe.

And she did — aligning with a murderer’s row of producers like Ariel Rechtshaid, Dev Hynes and Rostam Batmanglij to create Emotion, which has moved a tenth of a fraction of the units her previous record did. Art, meet commerce.

If any of these industry machinations faze the 30-year-old Jepsen, it was impossible to tell Friday, as she breezily worked the stage throughout her 85-minute set, waving at fans and interacting with her four-piece backing band (dressed all in black — a subtle nod to Robert Palmer).

She appeared to be occasionally assisted by a backing track, which plumped up her vocals, but the crowd — a demographically peculiar blend of gay men ready to dance the night away and families with small children, sticking it out to hear Maybe — cheered it all.

Emotion’s precisely sculpted austerity — songs like the set-opening Run Away with Me, the gossamer Gimmie Love, Making the Most of the Night or L.A. Hallucinations — didn’t always fully land live. Emotion itself is a perfect headphone record, which meant some of the nuance was lost in translation.

It all combined to create a kind of discombobulating atmosphere — a dizzy blend of past and present, along with an overwhelming sensation that if one naggingly annoying viral pop single is what the music business requires to allow records like Emotion to enter the world, then, well, so be it.

This story was originally published February 20, 2016 at 12:21 PM with the headline "Review: Carly Rae Jepsen at House of Blues."