Alexa Ray Joel puts her genes to good use

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff March 29, 2006

It was an excellent sign: the sight of Alexa Ray Joel in her pigtails and fishnets checking out the opening band between smooches with her bass-player boyfriend.

The 20-year-old daughter of pop star Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley looked like a real girl, a nice girl, albeit a girl who in so many ways, for both better and worse, drew the daddy card in the genetic lottery. Diminutive in stature, pronounced in facial features, and a natural singer of songs (miraculously, given that Kelly Osbourne is the rule and Bonnie Raitt the exception when it comes to musical celebrity offspring), Joel is tiptoeing into the family business.

Armed with no album, no team of handlers, and none of the fanfare that characteristically accompanies a rock-royalty debut, Joel brought a three-piece band and 10 songs, all but one original, to Great Scott on Monday. And while there were hardly enough patrons in the club to log a couple of dozen hits on her MySpace page, Joel, seated at her Yamaha electric piano, plowed valiantly through her 50-minute set of sturdy pop-rock tunes and contemplative singer-songwriter fare. There's nothing remotely indie or trendy about Joel. As a songwriter she's clearly absorbed the classics -- Carole King, Elton John, Billy Joel. As a singer she's quite frankly a powerhouse -- a nimble, soulful vocalist with genuine personality and a wonderfully original feel for phrasing.

As a performer, well, she's green. Joel announced each song with a stiff ''This next one is called . . ." A couple of them -- ''Far Away," most notable for its pedestrian chord changes and journal-entry lyrics, and a '50s-inflected toe-tapper that she should give to her father -- will surely be the source of a cringe in later years. But Joel's gifts are obvious despite her inexperience, and so is her intelligence. How clever to be honing her craft in small, sparsely filled rooms, for the curious few, away from the media glare. And how refreshingly novel.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.