It was a great week for Pittsburgh, and for Ottawa ... not so good. While the Penguins were beating up on the Senators in the playoffs, the New Pornographers were launching their spring tour in Ottawa -- without Neko Case.

Fortunately, the part-time member, so busy with her solo career, was back on board for the show Saturday night at the Carnegie Music Hall Library of Homestead, because the Canadian rockers are half the band without her. Besides adding a needed visual, the flaming redhead elevated the Pornographers with her siren voice and her tambourine playing. (Yes, when has a tambourine added so much color to a band?)

The band's two other frontliners, singer-guitarist Carl Newman and keyboardist-singer Kathryn Calder, could carry the load, but the three of them together have a one-of-a-kind vocal chemistry, like a power-pop Fleetwood Mac. The Pornographers hit the stage with Newman asking the sold-out crowd to rise, and there wasn't much reason to sit through "Use It," "All the Old Showstoppers" or "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth," driving pop songs with unstoppable hooks.

Case shined on "Challengers" and "Go Places," new songs that held up well against the old ones. Another offbeat highlight was drummer Kurt Dahle wearing an acoustic guitar for a Latin-style solo on "Adventures in Solitude," then spinning the guitar around and returning to drums.

The Pornographers climaxed the set with the "hey-la" sing-along of "The Bleeding Heart Show" and a thumping cover of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" that suited them perfectly and brought smiles from the fans.

For openers Okkervil River, it's the Will Sheff show. The lanky frontman with the whiplash hair virtually throws himself around the stage while delivering a highly dramatic vocal style reminiscent of Conor Oberst and a torrent of lyrical wit.

He overcame a bad, echoey sound mix at the outset and managed to win the crowd with the naked ballad "A Stone," the rocker "John Allyn Smith Sails" (with its "Sloop John B" segue) and the epic "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe," during which his six-piece band sounded like an orchestra.

This is one of the better indie-rock bills on the road right now, and it was a good catch for the Music Hall, even if it may have worked better in a large club.

-- Scott Mervis,
Post-Gazette pop music critic

About 30 or so years ago, Pittsburgh's young choreographers often lost track of their original concepts in a muddle of movement, if they had a concept at all. Today's youth is much more savvy about dance, which continues to grow and excite its audiences.

Such was the case at rEvolve Dance Theatre's "P(r)OP WORKS," Sunday night at Carnegie Library of Homestead. Each of five young artists presented dance pieces that held to a distinct vocabulary. Still, Laura Warren's "Vingt Six" and her duet, "Nagoya," with Megan Wollgast, looked hurried, with little room for the movement to sink in, to breathe.

Stephanie Hilton's "Carriage of Arms" held to its form, intertwining three dancers with an emphasis on the arms and support, but Hilton could have taken the potential of this poignant atmosphere further.

Luke Murphy, a student at Point Park University, is on the right track. His "Synaesthesia" showed a maturity of thought in his interpretation of the title, "a harmony of different or opposing impulses produced by a work of art."

He chose three senses: "Sight," with its dance on an uplifted angle; "Touch," a solo with a hooded Murphy reaching out to a group of people; and "Sound," with its beat-box amplitude. Most intriguing was the chunky phrasing, creating its own rhythmic overlay. However, Murphy's work could also be read another way, such as how our senses are being anesthetized by an environment crowded with light and noise.

Artistic director Marissa Balzer again tapped her signature floor work in "All Around" to music by the Dave Matthews Band. She has a talent for evoking a mood, this time of loneliness in her opening solo. Murphy popped into her outstretched arms in a reflective duet, then Balzer added more and more women, utilizing a black platform for a whimsical peek-a-boo touch. Deliberate in her articulation (the footwork has a quiet flair of its own), with a strong sense of silence to balance the movement, Balzer is a choreographer who demands attention.

-- Jane Vranish,
Post-Gazette dance critic

It was party time at the Byham Theater Sunday night as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band was holding court, but that's to be expected from a group whose official headquarters is the French Quarter. Trumpeter Mark Braud made that clear up front, admonishing the audience, "If you've been to New Orleans, you know how to act -- if you haven't, don't fight the feeling." You might have lost that fight, truth be told.

What followed over the next two hours or so, without intermission, was a lot of joy and fun, nothing overly analytical but still well-played with much verve all around. Jazz doesn't always have to be a head trip, and the band certainly wasn't offering one.

Every member of the septet save pianist Rickie Monie took a turn at the microphone, with Braud doing the majority of lead vocals. Tenor saxophonist Clint Maedgen possessed the most distinctive voice, specifically on "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" and "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire." W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," which started with a rhumba feel, featured expressive trombone from Frank Demond and proved the highlight of the first half.

"Sister Kate" featured Walter Payton, father of trumpeter Nicholas, and represented the most humorous moment of the evening, with the bassist at one point doing chorus-girl leg kicks.

Toward the end, the band turned up things a notch with numbers most often associated with New Orleans. Monie delivered a haunting, largely solo rendition of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." It preceded a "funeral march" to "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," with drummer Shannon Powell at the mic. "Last Chance to Dance" saw the four horn players, including soprano saxophonist Elliott "Stackman" Callier, sauntering up one aisle and back down the other; some of the audience followed and 50 people ended up on stage -- including one couple doing a serious jitterbug. That was followed with "When the Saints Go Marching In." (I did say it was a party, didn't I?)

A nice touch was the opening video tribute to the band's long-time trumpeter John Brunious, who died in February.

-- Rick Nowlin,
Post-Gazette staff writer