‘Who remembers the 80s? Good – I don’t!” Cheerful, barefoot and sparkling in sequins, Belinda Carlisle is walking her infatuated audience down memory lane. Each song on this greatest hits tour comes with a timestamp and a story, and right now she’s introducing Mad About You, the 1986 single that transformed her from a member of record-breaking all-female rock band the Go-Go’s into a glossy solo pop star with the love songs to match. Tonight, as back then, Carlisle’s distinctive, shivering vibrato finds a streak of hedonism inside its lyrics about dizzy infatuation.
This show hits shuffle on the big singles and key album tracks that Carlisle and her smiley five-piece band have been touring for years, and it opens with real attack: the title track of 1989 album Runaway Horses is earthy and elemental, Carlisle blasting big rock “whoa-oh-oh”s over punchy drums and a juddering riff. She clearly delights in performance, camping it up and pretending to faint during I Get Weak, and swinging an imaginary lasso for the moody, loosely psychedelic Circles in the Sand. An uncertain start to La Luna briefly breaks the spell, but when Carlisle is in full power, it’s as if a wind-machine is always blowing in her direction.
