Amber Mark Takes R&B ‘Three Dimensions Deep’ at Los Angeles Show: Concert Review

variety.com:

Sasha Urban editor“I was questioning what suffering was,” Amber Mark said to the crowd at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday night. “What is life, what is the meaning of life — I could go on and on — but I need to be here for three more hours and smoke a lot of weed to get into it, and this is not a Ted Talk.”It was a heavy introduction for the smooth R&B of “What It Is,” a song from her recently released debut album, “Three Dimensions Deep,” but such is the multiplicity of Mark, whose live set found her exploring a melange of genres and vocal styles.Bathed in blood-red lighting and dancing so energetically that her mic pack came loose, Mark was in full form as she sang about “a feeling so strange / the way time never stays the same.” Her voice was in top gear, not once wavering as she climbed the scale from her signature raspy alto register to a softer, high-pitched falsetto.

Although Mark’s music orbits an R&B planet, her influences, from hip-hop to bossa nova and rock, could be identified at various points throughout her set, for which she was accompanied by a four-piece band.

But beyond her more existential fare, Mark’s sense of humor was also on full display, most notably during her unironically excellent cover of Sisqó’s “Thong Song,” which has more than 5.5 million streams on Spotify.