Meg Myers lets all her songs do the talking at the El Rey Theatre

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Meg Myers at the El Rey Theatre (Photo by Mitch Livingston)
Meg Myers at the El Rey Theatre (Photo by Mitch Livingston)

What Meg Myers lacked in social skills on Tuesday night, she more than offset with smoldering intensity.

Characteristically eschewing the hi-how-are-ya’s — as if to not break character — the 29-year-old singer-songwriter ripped through the entirety of her debut album “Sorry” and a couple of EP tracks in a lickety-split 53-minute spleen-venting at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Photos by Mitch Livingston

The Tennessee-bred former “Daughter in the Choir” (the title of her first EP) is a pop singer, to be sure, but not one who is going to return fans’ frothy adulation in kind. Instead, she retains her faraway stare and concentrates on dialing up her emotions, with hopes her songs of love, lust, regret and rage connect.

They did Tuesday night, her first hometown show since her album’s September release. Dressed in something skimpy and black, Myers proved aerobic, electric and enigmatic while sailing through the songs on “Sorry.” The trifecta of “Go,” “Desire” and 2012’s “Curbstomp” was exemplary, with Myers cavorting around the stage and, at one point, tossing off “Desire’s” lyric “I want to f*ck you” with the naughtiest of over-the-shoulder glances. There was one crack in the armor later during “Make a Shadow;” in response to a female fan up front who was singing along and making a heart shape with her thumbs and index fingers, Myers briefly returned the gesture.

The riffy single “Lemon Eyes” came next-to-last, her three bandmates rising to metal-pop heights while the singer played that bass that always looks like it’s three sizes too large, while “I Really Want to You to Hate Me” ended the main set on a note of self-loathing. The one-song encore, “Heart Heart Head,” with its mournful cello part by Ken Oak, tempered that. It’s an acknowledgement of an ongoing battle between two selves, one that can’t be won. And the way Myers frames it, it’s a very uneasy truce.

Leading into Myers’ set, leather-jacketed singer-guitarist Nick Long, fronting a trio, crooned his way through a seductive set of Dark Waves songs. He also joked about winning his bandmates’ cash in a game called Big Money. Clearly, Long’s got game in either endeavor.

Armors opened the night with a set of synth-pop highlighted by Olen Kittlesen’s falsetto and the occasional excursion into rap.