IMITATION VELVET FROM GLASGOW

Critics and the sophisticated pop crowd that likes to think of itself as always on the cutting edge agree: This is the year of American bands in rock.

Repelled by the trendy commercialism of so many British groups, the cognoscenti are finding far more excitement in the grass roots purity and raw-boned independence of a growing network of U.S. attractions.

So why all the commotion Saturday night at the Palace over a new British hotshot? One reason is easy: Lloyd Cole sounds American. The only problem is he’s not exciting.

Cole, 24, and the four other members of the Commotions may call Glasgow home, but almost all their musical ideas carry U.S. signatures. I’m not concerned with territorial imperatives here, merely amused that a band flies thousands of miles to unveil something so commonplace.

Cole’s most obvious influences are the self-consciously clever wordplay of Bob Dylan and, especially, the sparse, beat-era expressionism of the Velvet Underground. Yes, here is something else that Lou Reed has to answer for.

In his most involving works with the Velvets and on his own, Reed has walked on the wild side, exploring the darker reaches of the soul with a special emphasis on painful excesses and endearing foibles. Because his sparse musical and vocal approach appeared both so hip and so easy, it was natural for musicians--especially those with Bohemian instincts--to have been intrigued.

The catch is that the minimalist, word-focused technique is simple to copy, but hard to expand upon because it ends up sounding hollow without strong injections of artistic imagination. David Bowie is an artist with sufficient imagination to have successfully built upon Reed’s style. Cole is part of a much larger group of writers who simply stand in Reed’s shadow. Don’t get the idea that the Commotions sound just like the Velvet Underground. They’re not that interesting.

Cole doesn’t share Reed’s early sense of helpless obsession. Though there’s an occasional trace of confrontation in his tales, the general tone is uneventful. He tries to inject bite in his tales of how people act after being stung by the love bug, but there is rarely any flesh-and-blood intimacy or insight.

If this all seems underwhelming on the group’s debut Geffen Records album, it was even duller live. Instead of synthesizer, the band relies on guitars, but it’s not the high-pitched declarations of the U2/Big Country contingent or the ringing guitars associated with the Byrds. The guitar work--by Cole and Neil Clark--has an insistent quality to it, but there is little emotion. The idea apparently is to make sure nothing detracts from Cole’s words. Bad move.

Like so many other literary-bent musicians, Cole is fluent in the language of rock, but he doesn’t have much to tell us. “Perfect Skin” has a catchy pop-rock exterior that makes it a natural for rock radio and even tempts you into thinking this newcomer may be onto something as he tells us wryly about a woman so consumed with her beauty that she asks you to turn the light to make sure you don’t miss it. But the song wears thin and most of Cole’s other tunes get bogged down in lines that are so self-conscious you flinch.

The Commotions’ stage manner didn’t help. Someone ought to introduce these guys to one another. They each went about their business as if putting in time on an assembly line--or chain gang. Where are Minneapolis’ Replacements or Phoenix’s Meat Puppets or Georgia’s R.E.M. or. . . ?