A Singer Confidently Following Her Heart

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.”