Mandy Moore by Amalia Levari

The new cradle-like sound stage at the Grammy Museum is built so widely that all 200 seats feel like they’re about 10 feet away from the performer. From that vantage point, all eyes on Mandy Moore registered the same sentiment: “Daaaamn, girl is well-adjusted.” Those who prefer their singer-songwriters torchy or tragic would do well to stay away from Ms. Amanda Leigh, whose preternatural pleasantness colors everything she does, for better or for worse. Her latest offering, a collaboration with Mike Viola, posits Moore as a soft-rock spitfire, a role that’s disorienting to those who know her as the saccharine late-90s pop queen whose pillowy lips were featured so prominently in videos that made dads the world over uncomfortable.

Considering that she’d sold more than 10 million records in her previous incarnation, there’s no doubt that the twangy, dusty tracks she’s cutting now will cause more than a few fans to scratch their heads. And to be sure, it does seem strained in a way—it’s clear that she’s still adjusting to the dimmer, smokier limelight. But the shift she’s made isn’t really remarkable for its maturity. On the contrary, the subject matter, though it’s buried in some impressively intricate imagery, resides firmly in the realm of 15-year-old girldom. But while songs like 1999′s “Candy” placated Mean Girls and their minions, Moore’s new work has shifted in terms of the sort of teenage girl this music is meant to reassure. Songs like “Love to Love Me Back” and “I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week” speak to the jilted and awkward—girls who read Frank O’Hara poems, stare at people’s hickeys, and sing into vacuum cleaner attachments while their classmates are at prom.

Tonight’s selection of songs had an unfortunate James Taylor aftertaste that will likely land them airplay in the quagmire of adult contemporary podcasts hosted by chest-hairy men in tank tops and parachute pants. But in its strongest and truest moments, Moore’s work is sensitive and smart and sweetly sad, like a wise-cracking old lady on a parkbench with a sleeping cat in her lap. In a pre-performance Q & A, Moore’s frequent aw-shucks shoulder-shrugs accompanied gentle apologies for her earlier work, and admissions that she’s still something of an apprentice to Viola and other musical veterans and friends. When asked about influences, the mentions of Wings-era McCartney and Bette Midler somehow sounded perfectly sensible coming from her, but in retrospect, it’s impossible to imagine those two names in any similar context, other than the most exciting potential cage-match the world has ever known. And if anyone can coax them into it, it’s Mandy Leigh Moore. Daaaamn. Girl could charm the jaws off a shark.

—Amalia Levari