Atkins's voice, songs are welcome wintry mix

Nicole Atkins's show Friday at T.T. the Bear's kicked off her latest tour. (aram boghosian for the boston globe)

January is typically music critic mop-up month. In the chilly, post-holiday, post-top 10 list lull, they hunker down to listen to things they didn't have time for when all those sparkly rock stars were up in their grill greedily demanding all the attention, as sparkly rock stars tend to do.

Often it is during this serene period that the best discoveries are made.

Nicole Atkins's debut, "Neptune City," released in October, was one of those gleeful finds.

The New Jersey native possesses a big voice, both as a singer and a songwriter, and an astute, layered touch as an arranger in songs that address romantic decay and the ghosts of her hometown riding the Asbury Park carousel in better times. Her alt-country-soul-rock, sometimes grandiose, sometimes intimate, is a kissing cousin to contemporary artists like Neko Case and Jenny Lewis and a descendent of such vulnerable-yet-steely types as k.d. lang and Chrissie Hynde.

Friday night at T.T. the Bear's Place, with her simpatico band the Sea in tow, Atkins made good on her recorded promise with an economical hourlong performance that felt like the start of something exciting.

The gig marked the beginning of Atkins's current tour and she expressed wide-eyed gratitude, saying that this was "the first time we've played Boston when there've been more than five people in the crowd."

The goodwill of that crowd was palpable. They swooned for the Spectorian grandeur of songs like "Maybe Tonight" and "Kill the Headlights," the former a dreamy melding of the Ronettes and Debbie Harry and the latter a surf-guitar and organ-fired combo that would likely draw a smile from both Bruce Springsteen and the late Roy Orbison. The audience also did its part, contributing the exclamatory backing vocals for the speedy waltz of "Brooklyn's on Fire!"

"Together We're Both Alone," with its majestic synthesized strings and languid guitars, perfectly evoked the operatic sense of raggedness felt the morning after the explosive end of a relationship. "I used to be afraid, but now I crave the quiet," she sang somewhere between defeat and self-assuredness.

Atkins sealed the glory of the evening with a fiery, emotion-loosing take on Patti Smith's "[Expletive] in a River."

Boston rockers The Luxury won the crowd over by rotating on an affable Beatles-Oasis-R.E.M. axis that highlighted sweet harmonies and endearing enthusiasm.