Pop Music Reviews : Van Morrison Muse Guides Tanita Tikaram

An hour or more before Tanita Tikaram launched into her version of Van Morrison’s “Domino” for an encore at the Roxy on Monday, it was already perfectly clear that Morrison’s muse was to be the guiding spirit of the evening. Tikaram’s new album surrounds her sultry, introverted coolness with nice, warm brass, and her live seven-piece band included a two-man horn section that took her often icy music into a realm approaching Celtic soul.

There’s at least one crucial difference, though: Morrison has the pipes for soul, while Tikaram has a lovely voice that’s ideal for mysterious solipsisms but incapable of what she tries to do with it at times now. Having her sing “Domino”--or even some of the Morrison-inspired material she’s written for her latest album--is like having Julie London or Nico attempt Mahalia Jackson.

The incongruity was also painfully evident in her new, awkward performing style. With a boyish haircut and a mannish suit, hunched over with eyes closed and body in shimmying motion, overeager Tikaram looked like a blind lounge singer in drag.

If uncommunicative, Tikaram is hardly untalented. When she hit the scene as an unbelievably precocious 18-year-old three years ago, it was hard to believe such intriguingly impenetrable lyrical mysteries could come out of a teen-ager.

But her themes are still opaque, and less interestingly so now--she sounds like Joan Armatrading gone completely cryptic. Trading in the spooky synthesizers and acoustic guitar for gentle, major-chord soul may be her stab at opening the music up, and the trappings are nice (and the band was terrific). But what she really needs to do is open herself up.