Urban sounds as good as he looks

Keith Urban can shred a guitar solo, find the pitch-perfect angst in a breakup song and deliver a heartfelt love letter on piano. But the real reason for the deafening screams from the crowd? Keith Urban is sexy.

We're talking "please play with your back to the audience because those jeans look so good" sexy, floppy hair in the eyes sexy, perfect white teeth sexy. He could sell out KeyArena with a dramatic reading — in his sexy New Zealand accent — of the Seattle phone book.

But Urban hasn't sold a million copies of his last record "Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing" on his pretty face. He's also a skilled multi-instrumentalist with a grit-tinged voice that hits the country sweet spots.

Urban and his band led the crowd through a night of rocked-up pop country, leaving room for an Urban guitar solo in almost every number. Coming back again and again to kneel on a catwalk that jutted through the floor seats, Urban grinned as he noodled on his electric, the outstretched hands of female fans grazing his legs.

Urban seemed to be really getting a kick out of the unrelenting audience adoration. He encouraged a number of singalongs and pointed out a few of his favorite fan signs in the crowd. He even took a flower from a fan and played — what else? — a guitar solo with it in his teeth.

But what could have read as cheesy from another performer — the rock'n'roll guitar handling, the fan high fives — came across as down-to-earth from Urban, a testament to his stage presence, honed after 25 years in the country biz.

Urban has also honed his music style, now eight albums in and about to release his first greatest hits compilation. He's a little bit country, a lot rock, especially live. While his albums put banjo mandolin, and acoustic guitar in the spotlight, those instruments retreat to the background on stage. Urban didn't pick up anything that wasn't a guitar, and sometimes he and three of his five-piece would all be strumming electric.

Some of the most barn-burning, bluegrass-tinged numbers came at the end of the two-hour show: "I Told You So," for one, which also, unexpectedly, featured the drum stylings of local Cascades Drum Corps.

But while Urban can clearly rock, he has a knack for connecting with the audience on the quieter songs. His searing breakup song "You'll Think Of Me" — performed with the full band on a tiny satellite stage near the back of the main floor — was the most heartfelt of the night. And alone with the piano for the first song of the encore Urban showed first a goofy side plunking out the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun" before amping up the romance for a song dedicated to his wife, actress Nicole Kidman.

Yes, sadly, Keith Urban is married. But that doesn't stop an arena full of girls from dreaming.

Joanna Horowitz: jbhorowitz@gmail.com