Review: On a fraught night, Shamir was the place to be

With news of the terrorist attacks in Paris - including the carnage at the Eagles of Death Metal show at Bataclan - being updated every minute Friday night, going to a pop concert didn't seem the appropriate thing to do.

It turned out, however, that the opposite was true. That's because the celebration led by Shamir created a community that reached beyond genre and gender and made the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia exactly the place to be. In his first song, the just-21 songwriter sang: "Best believe this city has just what you need / Come and play, there's no place you'd rather be."

Shamir, whose speaking and singing voice is in the falsetto range, was referring to Las Vegas, where he grew up across the road from a pig farm on the city's outskirts, raised on punk rock and country as well as the minimalist Princely pop-funk that dominates his promising debut album, Ratchet.

He could have meant city where people come to put their differences aside and give themselves over to music. Shamir, who has said he doesn't identify as male or female - is no Pollyanna: "If you live in the city, oh you're already in hell," he sings in "Vegas."

Performing with an interracial two-woman, one-man trio, he embodied an openhearted spirit that's inviting because his tightly crafted songs are so darn catchy. That's particularly true of "On the Regular," the most hip-hop leaning and grabby of Ratchet's 10 tunes and the one that might give the mistaken impression he's principally a rapper.

The wide range of his interests and abilities was apparent in multiple ways. When he said he was about to perform a cover, I was hoping for a version of some tough-minded country singer such as Miranda Lambert or Kacey Musgraves that he's shown himself partial to. Instead, he demonstrated his catholic taste by taking on, and making his own, the California punk-rock band Joyce Manor's heartbroken "Christmas Card."

The show moved toward delirious, sweaty catharsis, the audience expressing enthusiasm by moving in unison to bass-heavy grooves and crowd surfing on songs in which the tempo kicked up. Shamir can soar but can also slow it down. He dedicated "Darker" to his late great-grandmother. The song didn't shy away from grief, but it also expressed the positive outlook that makes him so appealing. "You know it doesn't get darker," he sang, "unless you expect it to." That sentiment was especially welcome on Friday night.