Review: Carly Rae Jepsen lightens the mood

It felt almost disrespectful to walk into Carly Rae Jepsen's show at the Trocadero on Friday only a few hours after nearly a hundred concertgoers were murdered by armed men in Paris. Jepsen's third album, Emotion, is a buoyant suite of '80s-worshiping pop songs about falling in and out of love, perfect for a hot summer afternoon but not for a night when bodies were still being counted 4,000 miles away. When the preshow music turned to Silentó's "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)," grating under the best of circumstances, the gulf between the world outside and the world of the stage seemed impossible to bridge.

But as I looked around the room, a handful of girls, old enough to stay up past 9 but perhaps too young for their parents to share with them the horrors of the day, slipped into the by now familiar dance steps, and as they whipped and nae naed, I was reminded of something the Clash's Joe Strummer once said: Music reminds you that it's fun to be alive.

Jepsen made no reference to the evening's horrors, unless her knit beret was an oblique tribute, but from the triumphant burst of saxophone that opened "Run Away With You" on, her 90-minute set was testament to pop music's power to transport and unify, to sweep an audience away and yet make them feel the ecstasy of every passing moment. Jepsen, who will turn 30 Saturday, has been through romance's wringer, and such songs as "Gimmie Love" and "Your Type" reflect a perspective in which hope is a choice rather than a default. But at least on record, she's never overwhelmed by heartbreak; she introduced Emotion's title track as "really a depressing song," but it's less concerned with her own pain than wishing an ex-lover missed her more. In "Boy Problems," the pain of a relationship's end is less than the danger of boring her friends to tears talking about it.

Although she was backed by a four-piece band, Jepsen lavished nearly all her attention on the audience; when her backing singers moved up to dance with her, it felt awkward and staged, a halfhearted simulation of girl-power camaraderie. Her expressions were as precise as any actor's, but you also got the sense that they'd be the same any other night on the tour: Smile, nod, wink-two-three-four.

It was a consummate performance, but even in the same room, it felt like watching her on TV.