L’il Yvette, whose name is often misconstrued as Lilly Vet (or worse) in the local media, wore, by our count, seventeen scarves to the Thursday show at Hamilton’s. The mostly retired R&B vocalist did half a dozen songs backed by the exemplary cover band Loos & Tite.

Scarves were L’il Yvette’s style long before they became associated with hippie ‘70s rock stars. She wears them not as glad rags but as a field of color and light, veils upon veils. Her songs can be like that too. Not “Sassy Broad,” of course, the regional hit with which she opened her set, but “Big Brute” is a sensitive song about the threat of romance,  and “Ginger” is a spicy tune about living one’s life to the fullest.

When she sang about Salome, however, it got a bit obvious. Not to mention rather embarrassing. Even Loos & Tite looked the other way.No, she wasn’t stripping. She was doing that dippy scarf-juggling routine that bad magicians do to fill time. Worse, she wasn’t doing it to the beat of the song, and it even messed up her timing when she had to jump back into the vocals.

Scarves are fine when your neck is cold. Or when you want to cover up a hickey. Or when you want to escape from a second-story window. Can’t think of any other thing scarves are good for. Can’t think of one.

Better distractions: Ties for Tots benefit (so kids can dress up for job interviews) at Hamilton’s, with 2 Dogs Works, White’s Family, Special Italian Dishes, Tripe, Ocean Fish and The Tomlinsons. Some of those are one-off local-supergroup ensembles; if we’d been more observant of the Hamilton’s scene in recent months we could tell you which ones…. Could I Have Lupus and C Something Essay Something at the Bullfinch… An evening with 498,632 Wins and Blast of Hydration at D’ollaires. Acoustic numbers.