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Review: Esperanza Spalding Recalls the Creativity of Youth in New Songs

Esperanza Spalding performing at Le Poisson Rouge in an introduction of “Emily’s D+Evolution,” her concept-minded new body of songs.Credit...Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

Esperanza Spalding held a small screen in front of her face as she took the stage at Le Poisson Rouge on Friday night, whipping it aside with a theatrical flourish. There at once was her striking new look: glam pants, candy-colored eyeglass frames, long braids in place of her trademark Afro. But the show’s big reveal had more to do with her music.

As a bassist and a singer-songwriter, Ms. Spalding has been showered with acclaim for her nimble self-possession; for her bell-like sonority; and for her effervescent breadth of style, encompassing modern jazz, Brazilian pop, vanguardist soul and chamber art song. She’s now 30, four years past her breakout win for best new artist at the Grammy Awards, and evidently interested in new ways of working with her talent and her image.

She has described “Emily’s D+Evolution,” her concept-minded new body of songs, as a callback to the purer creative intentions of a child. Emily is her middle name, and it was what people called her back when she first wore braids and big glasses, and seemed always to be putting on a show in the backyard. If that sounds like wistful remembrance of a simpler time, maybe it is. “See this pretty girl” were the first words Ms. Spalding sang on Friday. “Watch this pretty girl flow.”

Those lyrics came from “Good Lava,” with a four-on-the-floor drumbeat and a thorny electric guitar riff, as if to fly the pirate flag of the Black Rock Coalition. Ms. Spalding sang the song’s melody with her usual swooping grace, but also with sturdy and well-drilled reinforcements: Corey King and Nadia Washington on background vocals and keyboards, Matt Stevens on guitar and Justin Tyson on drums. Ms. Spalding played electric bass throughout the show with zippy flair but also a hard, focused restraint.

The show consisted entirely of new songs, none of which had yet surfaced on social media, which meant that the standing-room audience wasn’t cheering the familiar. (Make no mistake: People were cheering.) Ms. Spalding is still enamored of Wayne Shorter’s harmonic depth and Stevie Wonder’s melodic lift, but her frame of reference has broadened in salutary ways: “Funk Your Fear” had the serpentine gnarl of a Funkadelic anthem, and “Noble Nobles” brazenly evoked “Hejira”-era Joni Mitchell. (The encore and sole cover was Ms. Mitchell’s “Help Me,” from a couple of albums prior.)

Every now and again in the show, Ms. Spalding and her backup singers engaged in a coordinated burst of spoken-word patter or street theater. One of these involved diplomas and a mock processional, and led into a sardonic tune called “Ebony and Ivy,” presumably referring to a recent book of the same title about the legacy of slavery in American institutions of higher learning.

Elsewhere, Ms. Spalding created set pieces with lyrics alone, addressing class divisions in a purposefully bleary tune called “Tambien Detroit,” and relationship falsehoods in “Unconditional Love,” a winningly chromatic funk ballad. “Change Us,” which evoked Prince in righteous soul-warrior mode, featured a chorus built around a complaint: “Why must we fuss?” Ms. Spalding cried. “Just when it’s good, you want to change us.”

Ms. Spalding has never had to say those words to her fan base, given how quickly she moves. “Emily’s D+Evolution” will probably be her next album, but those details haven’t yet been announced. What’s certain is that she’s getting this music out on her own terms, including at a free show at the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival on June 12. If the crowd there is anything like the one on Friday, she’ll have no problems at all with the rollout.

Esperanza Spalding performs on June 12 at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival; esperanzaspalding.com.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: A Callback to the Pure Creativity of Youth. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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