Soul Love for David Bowie from the Seattle Rock Orchestra

Let's just get the formalities out of the way: The Seattle Rock Orchestra's experiment with wrapping live rock in a gorgeous feather boa of strings, horns, and choral richness merits a major thumbs-up. Their David Bowie tribute Friday night spelled that out in big moonage-daydream letters.

The packed Moore Theatre sported one of the broadest demographics I've seen at a show in a while, with everyone from seven-year-olds to retirees (no exaggeration) represented. And they all ate up every orchestral flourish, every surge of horn muscle, and--of course--every classic David Bowie song.

The tunes--mostly representing the Thin White Duke's glammiest and most drama-drenched career phase--really were built for this kind of treatment. The full-on instrumental heft just pointed up the richness of Bowie's songwriting, and SRO mastermind Scott Teske's arrangements were almost 100 percent on-the-money (one exception: the jaunty marching-band arrangement on "Heroes" proved an ill fit for the song's wounded melodrama ). Ziggy Stardust received the most cover version love: "Five Years," Ziggy's apocalyptic opener, started off the show (crooned in classic Brit-Pop style by Tom Beecham of The Raggedy Anns), and no less than four other tracks from the iconic glam album surfaced. Hunky Dory came a close second.

Aping that oft-imitated Bowie baritone woulda been a fool's game, and thankfully the revolving cast of guest vocalists sidestepped that bit of sincere flattery. The Kindness Kind's Alessandra Rose suggested Hope Sandoval and Bjork hanging out on "Life on Mars," David Terry lent low-key cool to "The Man Who Sold the World," and People Eating People's Nouella Johnston actually improved on Diamond Dogs' hammiest ballad, "When You Rock and Roll With Me," by injecting a dose of gospel fire into her performance.

My favorite vocal turn of the night, though, was probably the simplest. Jon Auer of veteran power-poppers The Posies lent his pipes to "Moonage Daydream," "Starman," and an especially gorgeous final encore of Hunky Dory's "Quicksand." Auer possesses one of the most clarion beautiful voices in Northwest rock, and his singing brought to light another oft-overlooked virtue of David Bowie's songs--how damned pretty most of them are, with or without the glam makeup.