Style and substance

For a girl from the backwoods of Vermont, Grace Potter sure cleans up nice. And her band The Nocturnals swept the floor with an adoring crowd at the House of Blues Friday night, updating and fleshing out a live show that has grown and expanded with astonishing ferocity since the release of the group’s self-titled third album last year.

Opening up with tracks “Only Love” and “Hot Summer Night” from that record, the new-look group, which only recently made second guitarist Benny Yurco a permanent member after accepting new bassist Catherine Popper on board about a year ago, was determined to give every track a makeover. The result was a fleshier, meatier sound that brought many of their songs out of the folksy roots from which they were conceived and into the big hall, large venue atmosphere that their popularity has afforded them.

And Potter, out of them all, should know a thing or two about makeovers. She’s always – whether consciously or not (and I tend to believe the former) – played up her sex symbol status, but since Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (Hollywood Records) blew the lid off the band last June the girl who claimed at the introduction to “Joey” that she “didn’t see a traffic light until she was ten years old” has found herself in the Style pages of People magazine and as one of MTV and VH1’s Divas of 2010 lists.

But although she’s been recognized for the glam, she and her cohorts haven’t neglected the rock, as evidenced by the previously acoustic-based grooves of “Jukebox And My Table” and the aforementioned “Joey” being stretched into roof-shaking epics, with guitarists Scott Tournet and Yurco teaming with Popper and drummer Matt Burr to produce new versions that are stunning in their sheer volume. With Potter’s sparkly dress reflecting the stage lights and the band firing on all cylinders, there was not a corner of the House of Blues that they didn’t fill.

Potter’s songwriting skills were on show during the always-emotional “Apologies,” while they flipped the script for an all-acoustic “Treat Me Right” with just Potter, Tournet and Yurco. That song fed into a seamless acoustic-to-electric transition into “Stop The Bus” with the full band, a song which also benefited from a fresh coat of paint supplied by a Tournet-led funkified breakdown. The lead man was on fire throughout, utilizing his slide and finger-style strengths in equal measure and generally pushing the band into the stratosphere.

One knock on the band could have been that in past years they rarely deviated from their tried and true set lists; you could always count on a few staples, and it was a given that they’d end their set with “Nothing But The Water.” These days things have changed, and it’s nice to see the band with enough confidence to throw their previous showstopper into the middle of the set. The song opens with a showcase of Grace’s voice, which is too-often overlooked by the tabloid-hungry public, before kicking into the pure rock and roll of the track’s body, with all five members getting a chance to shine. A set closer of “Paris,” the sexy opener from that most recent album, brought with it the news that Grace and co. will be headlining the Bank of America Pavilion August 20, another step forward for a band on a meteoric rise.

Coming out for an encore all by himself, Yurco entertained the crowd for about five minutes with a solitary acoustic jam before being joined by the rest and switching into a fully-electric version of Heart’s “Crazy On You” which featured a drum breakdown and a Tournet takeover that had Potter dancing like a demon all over the stage. As “Medicine” brought the show to a close, Potter thanked the crowd with a massive grin, saying, “We’ve played all over the country, all over the continent, but it’s great to come home to New England.” With her and the Nocturnals’ trajectory shooting them sky high, New England wouldn’t mind them coming home more often.