Nellie McKay
Music Mill
Tuesday, Nov. 27

Nellie McKay, who usually inhabits an uncharted territory somewhere between Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, Greenwich Village and whatever blighted district artists are squatting in today, traveled to the Midwest for a Nov. 27 show at the Music Mill, where she spent an hour and a half accompanying herself on piano and ukulele.

Sporting a pink chiffon dress that nicely complemented her blond hair and youthful, round-cheeked face, McKay arrived on stage carrying a stack of songbooks, looking as though she were ready to hunker down for an evening at the cocktail bar. Two tunes she picked out of those Great American Songbooks deserve mention: “Broadway Melody,” a 1929 chestnut McKay sang with a campy energy redolent of Al Jolson, and 1931’s “Prisoner of Love,” delivered in a soprano warble reminiscent of Tiny Tim.

McKay displayed her sharp sense of humor on her own material. Drawing the most laughs was “Mother of Pearl,” a satire on misogyny that opens with the line “Feminists don’t have a sense of humor,” includes a dance break and ends with the disconcerting peroration “I’m Dennis Kucinich, and I approve of this message.” She proved her chops with “Oversure” from her newest record, “Obligatory Villagers,” a piece that shifted tempos and genres in a way worthy of a Broadway overture. And McKay pulled out all the stops on her last tune of the night, “Zombie”; stepping out from behind the piano to the front of the stage, she growled and danced her way through its silly lyrics, including imitations of “Zombie Bob Dylan” and “Zombie Dinah Shore,” making for one of the most cheerful and attractive zombies the living have ever seen.