Brandi Carlile is a national treasure.
That’s the biggest takeaway from the singer/songwriter’s magical, spirited and joyous performance Saturday night in front of a sold-out, absolutely reverent crowd at Target Center in downtown Minneapolis.
“Minneapolis! Look at you! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, you angels,” Carlile said early on in the show, which was broadcast live on 89.3 The Current.
Live video of the concert also streamed on veeps.com for $29.99, with the proceeds benefiting the Minneapolis-based legal aid nonprofit The Advocates for Human Rights. She told the crowd that the stream — which will be available for viewing for 48 hours — had raised half a million dollars.
“The great state of Minnesota,” Carlile said. “You set an example for the rest of us that nobody will ever forget. I’m starstruck, I’m nervous, I’m in awe of all of you.”
Carlile was obviously referring to the record surge of ICE agents in the state, but she didn’t preach and she didn’t proselytize beyond a brief monologue in the second hour of the show. Instead, she said things like “It has pained me not to be here … you’ve been on my mind every second of every day. I’ve thought about what special people you are. There’s no one else like you.”
The love flowed both ways during this stop on Carlile’s first-ever arena tour. Yes, she has played arenas in the past, including a triumphant show at the former Xcel Energy Center in July 2022, but this was her first time with her own sound and light systems. Still, she kept the production relatively simple with a large stage for her band, some footlights and a giant screen behind them all.
Going way back to her 2005 debut album, the Twin Cities have been one of Carlile’s biggest markets. She has played the metro more than 30 times and at one point took a moment to remember some of the many venues, including the 400 Bar, Varsity Theater, First Avenue, the Minnesota State Fair and Minnesota Zoo.
“It’s been such an incredible journey with you guys since the very beginning,” Carlile said. She later added that she draws bigger crowds in Minnesota than in her home state of Washington.
She opened with “Returning to Myself,” the title track of her eighth and most recent album. With an acoustic guitar across her chest, she performed in front of an orange spotlight that dramatically cast her silhouette onto a scrim that dropped midway through the song to reveal the full band. From there, she played much of the new record as well as its predecessor, 2021’s “In These Silent Days.”
As always, she proved equally adept at contemplative ballads and full-out rockers. “Mainstream Kid” fell squarely in the latter category and she tore through it with a ferociousness not often seen in the singer/songwriter set. She followed it up with another barn burner, “Broken Horses” and later, the slow-building epic “Right on Time.”
There were plenty more intimate moments, like when she took a pair of song requests from the crowd, backed only by her longtime bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth. The first, “Beginning to Feel the Years,” had a roadie scrambling backstage to find a ukulele and the second, “The Things I Regret,” stomped along with glee. (Both requests came from Carlile’s 2015 album “The Firewatcher’s Daughter.”)
She introduced “A War with Time” with a story about visiting New York for the first time, performed “A Woman Oversees” on electric piano joined by the Milwaukee siblings who go by the moniker SistaStrings and burned the place down with mammoth takes on her two best-known songs, “The Story” and “The Joke.”
Every time Brandi Carlile plays the Twin Cities, it’s tempting to say it was her best show here yet. Saturday’s concert was her best show here yet … until the next one.
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