Alexa
Ray Joel, the 28-year-old daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley,
has her father’s eyes. Large, round, heavy lidded and soulful, they
express a confidence and brash, forthright attitude that is also
conveyed in singing whose rough timbre and piercing high notes at times
bring to mind a soprano answer to Stevie Nicks. Her sound, though not beautiful, is many shaded and emotionally high pitched. She has no problems with intonation.
At
her opening-night engagement at Café Carlyle on Tuesday, Ms. Joel, who
occasionally played an electric keyboard, was joined by Carmine Giglio
on piano and Garo Yellin on cello. The absence of bass and drums
suggested that Ms. Joel is not headed in a rock direction. Her cover
version of Bad Religion’s 1993 rock song “Skyscraper” divested it of its
clobbering drive.
Her
original work, which can be heard on a six-song EP from 2006,
“Sketches” (Audio Bee), and on several singles, is firmly grounded in a
pop tradition in which streams converge, from gospel to Tin Pan Alley.
The songs are bluntly melodic, lyrically direct and catchy. Her ballad
“Night Fantasy,” the only original song she performed on Tuesday, is not
on the EP.
Ms.
Joel’s 11-song set was unusually short and had no encore. But she had
more than enough time to portray herself as someone who follows her
heart wherever it directs her, from rock classics (“A Whiter Shade of
Pale”) to standards (“On the Sunny Side of the Street”) to traditional
folk (“Loch Lomond,” delivered with a light Scottish brogue) to Stevie
Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever).” The show
culminated with a fervent rendition of (what else?) “Just the Way You Are.”
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