Adams aims to musically lift spirits

"I'm here tonight to tell you that you're beautiful and there ain't nothing wrong with you," she declared recently at the city's premiere cabaret venue. Then she launched into "Picture You the Way That I Do," a gently grooving pop number with a softly imploring hook from her new album, "Let's Stay Here" (E1 Music).

Looking tired but radiant after a nearly two-hour show and another 45 minutes greeting fans, Adams made her way back to the green room, where she mostly ignored a glass of cabernet sauvignon.

While "Let's Stay Here" is her first secular album in eight years, Adams made it clear that her mission remains the same, no matter what genre she's exploring at the moment.

"You want to be the balm for all of the hurt and wounded in the world," says Adams, 47, who opens a two-night run at Scullers on Friday with her superb working quartet.

Adams is no Pollyanna. She faces the hard facts of life squarely in her songs, addressing issues such as domestic violence, school massacres, and romantic despair. And she gives Dr. Phil a run for his money when it comes to relationship counseling by illustrating the "art of fighting fair" with examples from her own marriage, a potentially sticky endeavor considering that her husband, John Cushon, is her drummer and music director.

"It's not a problem," Cushon says after the show. "She's very honest. What you see is what you get, and our relationship is great. We worked together for three years and it was strictly professional. I looked at her one night literally as a woman, and went 'Oh! And she's gorgeous too!' It's like you have what Oprah calls 'Aha!' moments."

Onstage, Cushon gives Adams all the support she needs, filling out the quartet's sound with rhythm tracks and prerecorded background vocals. With her prodigious pipes and glorious, throaty contralto, she could easily do without, but Adams believes that fans want to hear the arrangements they're familiar with from her recordings.

Accompanying herself at the piano, she's an accomplished songwriter who started composing as a teenager for the Southern Baptist congregation in Yakima, Wash., where her father was the minister. When she felt the need to expand her musical horizons beyond the bounds of sacred music, she wrote the tune "I've Got to Sing My Song."

"That was pivotal and I'm still performing it," Adams says. "It was for my dad, because I had to explain to him why I chose this as my career, and I wrote it in a gospel vein, because that's what he would understand."

She was living in the Kansas City area when her big break came through an entirely unanticipated avenue. After hearing her local act, the British new wave band Tears for Fears recruited her for a prominent role on the hit 1989 album "The Seeds of Love." Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears ended up coproducing her debut release, "Circle of One," featuring an anguished gospel-powered version of Brenda Russell's "Get Here," which became one of the defining hits of 1990.

She has thrived ever since, despite some lackluster efforts by producers. On her new album, Adams produced or coproduced (with Paul Peterson) almost every track, and she supplies herself with a satisfying array of grooves and moods, while throwing in an occasional twist.

Amid all the songs seeking uplift and healing, Adams offers a pleading version of Billie Holiday's "Don't Explain." A quintessential example of what vocalist Wesla Whitfield once called the "hello-I'm-a-doormat, step-on-me" category of masochistic standards, the song seems to heighten the contradictions of her career.

"Today I'm all of that," she says. "I am carnal and I am sacred and a holy saint. I try to get away from the carnal part, but the human part of me is still there. What we do is to try to allow the righteousness to shine forth through the music."