We missed her at Cafe Nine Saturday night, but here's what they said about Sarah Borges' gig at B.B. King's in NYC...

Band Seeking Audience Willing to Leave Its Seats
By JON CARAMANICA (NY Times 11/24/08)

Should there be, sometime in the near future, a sock hop in need of a house band, Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles would like to apply for the position. Granted, clean-scrubbed, 1950s-influenced rock is but one part of this gleeful young band’s repertory, which also includes rockabilly, vintage country, moody ’90s indie rock and girl-group pop. Still, this group delivers even its sullen songs with velocity, so that when Ms. Borges looked out on the dinner crowd at B. B. King Blues Club & Grill on Sunday, she couldn’t quite mask her glumness: “You’re all sitting down. How are you going to dance?”

Ms. Borges and her Boston-based band were opening for the Blasters, the longtime punk-influenced rockabilly outfit that is also no friend to a seated audience. But the modesty and calm of the room turned into an opportunity for Ms. Borges and her brood. After a slow start, in which the band was stiff, and Ms. Borges’s vocals were mixed impossibly low, the chairs finally got some competition. In a sparkling black minidress and beat-up tan cowboy boots, Ms. Borges was a sharp frontwoman, with a warm, cheery voice that she wasn’t afraid to stretch, hissing some of her words on “Daniel Lee” and singing plaintively on “Stop and Think It Over.”

Released in 2007, “Diamonds in the Dark” (Sugar Hill), Ms. Borges’s second album and first with the Broken Singles, is fiery and charming, featuring an unlikely range of excellent covers of songs by Tom Waits, Canned Heat, X and Dolly Parton. They skipped those here, though, sticking largely to originals. The band — the guitarist Lyle Brewer, the bass player Binky and the drummer Rob Dulaney — was consistently rollicking, and Ms. Borges wielded her guitar in muscular fashion, especially on a ferocious version of NRBQ’s “It Comes to Me Naturally,” from the forthcoming album “The Stars Are Out,” due next year. Only in a couple of spots did this vivacious singer let the audience feel comfortable resting in its seats. “Modern Trick,” an airy, dry number about regret, was one of them. “I want to live my life in stereo,” Ms. Borges sighed, as Mr. Dulaney lightly tapped his snare with a pair of brushes:

When I want someone to turn me on
I can signal with my red light
When I want to, I can amplify
the parts of me you like the best
Just the same, I could equalize
the too-loud parts of the rest.