An Evening with the Dixie Chicks [VHS]

Alternately goofy and poignant, An Evening with the Dixie Chicks is like getting together with your friends after a hectic day at work: merry diversions, too much personal information spilling like beer, and a slow, soulful authenticity descending as the evening wears on. While the Chicks' predominantly late-20s, female crowd basks in kinship with the band's prolific patter about recent divorces and pregnancies, they are also sweetly appreciative of such shimmering, dreamy material as "Believe in Love," the self-mocking sting of "White Trash Wedding," and the extra pinch of gravitas that makes its way into a live version of Stevie Nicks's "Landslide." The Chicks expertly, almost invisibly, steer their show's mood with remarkable songs ("Top of the World") and country hokum ("Travelin' Soldier"), but it's the punky sneer of their kill-the-batterer satire "Goodbye Earl" that stands out, gaining another edge of reckless fun amid the Chicks' constituency. --Tom Keogh