Clarkson more idle than 'Idol'

First "American Idol" winner Kelly Clarkson could have coasted on her stature, turning out broadly popular mainstream pop for decades.

Instead, her latest album, "My December," is born of a genuinely dark phase. America's sweetheart defied big-name producers -- and her record label president -- to write her own songs for a CD that was less about instant success and more true to her angry, desperate feelings at the time. It didn't work because the undistinctive rockers downplayed her sterling voice and overshadowed the more winning acoustic soul tunes.

In concert Friday at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, Clarkson, 25, managed to unify her conflicting urges into a concise 75-minute program that pleased a near-capacity crowd, but the singer herself seemed more and more detached as the evening progressed.

The Texas native and her seven-member band front-loaded the show with new rock numbers like "One Minute" and "Never Again," as if to get them out of the way. When she brought the energy and volume down a notch for the nakedly personal "Maybe," it was refreshing to actually hear her voice clearly and be reminded of its raw power.

Slow numbers are clearly her strength, but fans may disagree. Her hardest rocking song, "Hole," brought a noticeable lift to the crowd. Then she peaked on an ensuing quiet, three-song set: a piano-and-vocal rendition of her smash "Because of You," Patty Griffin's stirring "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" and a lovely version of "Be Still" with an unplugged full band.

Clarkson then closed with a half-hour of marginal new songs from the slow-selling "My December" and old favorites from her 2004 blockbuster "Breakaway" album, but she seemed increasingly bored. Her only real stage move all night was to occasionally Pogo for about five seconds before stopping to rest. Much of the time she merely walked through her set, seemingly dazed and distant.

One of the few times Clarkson became animated was when she rolled out a statue of a Chivas Regal bottle that fans had made for her in honor of her bluesy tune about the Scotch whisky on "My December." Before rendering "Chivas," she eagerly took a few swigs from an airline-size bottle of booze. (Clarkson told the audience, which was noticeably older than the crowd she drew in 2005 at the same theatre, that she does not condone underage drinking. Nice.)

In all, it was a strange and perhaps revealing moment: Clarkson seemed to become tipsy and she muffed the start of the next and final number, her signature "Since U Been Gone." It seemed a fitting snapshot for a falling "Idol."

Jim Meyer is a freelance writer in Farmington.