Review: Summertime sadness with Beck and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann

The Philadelphia Orchestra could hardly have picked a more suitable partner for its final pop-classical collaboration of the year in Philly than Beck, together creating a satisfying and refreshingly freewheeling evening at the Mann Center on Thursday.

Beck is most closely identified in the pop consciousness with the hip-hop hijinks and sonic collage approach of 1990s hits like “Where It’s At” and “Loser.”

Both of those eventually made their way into the set on Thursday, and brought the crowd to their feet near the end of his nearly two-hour performance.

The former gave him cause to move into the crowd and show off his herky-jerky dance moves while altering lyrics to rhyme “a place we saw the lights turn low” with “the jigsaw jazz and the Philly flow.”

But along with Beck’s penchant for genre-blending and whimsical, absurdist lyrics, there’s always been a more straightforward and earnest through line of bummed-out Beck that goes back to 1998′s Mutations and 2002′s Sea Change.

What distinguishes those records — as well as 2014′s Morning Phase, which outraged the Bey Hive and the pop world at large when it beat out Beyoncé for an album of the year Grammy — are arrangements that are outwardly becalmed while a current of emotional tumult roils beneath the surface.

And what makes that music shimmer and shine are strings — lots of them, arranged by noted composer and conductor David Campbell, who has worked with everybody from Barbra Streisand to Billie Eilish, and happens to be Beck’s father.

So in embarking on his 2024 orchestral tour along with conductor Steven Reineke, who led the 72-member orchestra that was packed on to the Mann stage, Beck opened up an avenue to put a fresh spin on his catalog.

Beck’s fellow Los Angeleno Molly Lewis opened the show, surprising concertgoers getting to their seats with an act that consisted almost entirely of … whistling.

Dressed in a glittering gown like a classic Hollywood femme fatale, she playfully — and quite musically — whistled while she worked, backed by pre-recording tapes on her own wistful originals and versions of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan” and Dave Berry’s “The Crying Game.”

She also won over the crowd with her comic timing. “I’m not used to such small venues,” she deadpanned, and in closing her set, urged the crowd to “stick around. There is another act coming on.”

Beck’s sultry summertime sadness theme was emphasized by the lush textures of melancholy musings like “The Golden Age” and “Paper Tiger.”

The high-drama astringent strings on the latter played off electric guitars strummed by Beck and Jason Falkner, one of the members of Beck’s four-piece band who stuck around and backed him on a three-song encore after the orchestra left the stage.

It was an evening of deep cuts, especially rewarding for hard-core fans, though smartly structured to pick up with nuggets like “The New Pollution” sprinkled in to keep the languorous cuts from getting too enervating.

In other words, it was pretty mellow but never boring. Choice rarities included “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime,” the Korgis’ song Beck covered for the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. “Tarantula,” from the 2018 movie Roma, which Beck based on a This Mortal Coil version of a Colourbox song, was dedicated “to all the goths out there on the lawn, hiding in the trees.”

He correctly noted that his songs couldn’t put the full force of the Fabulous Philadelphians on full display. “The oboe section might be a little chill tonight,” he said, while praising Reineke, who appeared to be enjoying himself immensely, as “the hardest-working one up here.”

But he approached the evening as a rare opportunity to be made the most of. That meant welcome diversions into Brazilian music on “Tropicalia” and “Missing” along with shout-outs to his heroes Caetano Veloso and Jorge Ben. And a dedication of “We Live Again” to French singer Francoise Hardy, who died last month at 80, and for whom he originally wrote the song.

And maybe the biggest kick of all for Beck was getting to do two songs by Scott Walker, the late 1960s pop-star-turned-avant-garde-cult-artist who rarely performed his richly orchestrated songs live.

So for Beck, this was a chance to not only sing but to hear “It’s Raining Today” and “Montague Terrace (In Blue)” in full flower. And while there were some instances during Thursday’s show when his vocals were in danger of being overwhelmed by the grandeur of the orchestra, he was fully up to the task on the Walker songs.

Thanking the orchestra, Beck talked of being spoiled by “being backed by an 80-piece band.” With Philly history that reaches back to dates at JC Dobbs and the Troc in the 1990s, and his concert at the Mann last year with the French band Phoenix, he said “I’ve had so many amazing shows in Philadelphia over the years. And this is one I won’t forget.”

After the musicians departed, Beck got his jollies goofing around banging the gongs and tapping the mallets the musicians left behind. Then he went from maximalism to minimalism on the spirited blues workout, “One Foot in the Grave,” accompanied only by his own harmonica and stomping foot.

“It’s called dynamics,” he joked, “we call that stagecraft.” And then he cranked it up with the band on “Devil’s Haircut” and “Loser,” and made sure he sent the crowd home happy.

The Philadelphia Orchestra will perform the score of Disney’s “Aladdin” in Concert at the Mann Center, 5201 Parkside Ave., on Saturday, manncenter.org. The orchestra with back John Legend during its annual residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Aug. 7, spac.org.