POP MUSIC REVIEWS : TROWER BACK WITH A ‘PASSION’

It makes perfect sense that Robin Trower’s comeback bid seems to be clicking. After all, this is a time when more and more people’s idea of rock’s good old days now includes the ‘70s .

Trower steps into this odd time warp with a new album, “Passion,” that’s making a steady climb up the charts. And his local shows seem to be a hot ticket. The guitarist kicked off a sold-out two-night stand Tuesday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. He plays tonight at Fender’s in Long Beach and Friday and Saturday at Reseda’s Country Club.

No one’s going to confuse 1987 with the Englishman’s mid-’70s heyday, when he scored three consecutive Top 10 albums and was headlining arenas. But it’s also a far cry from his situation in recent years, when he had no record contract and was hobbling along the has-been circuit.

Though Trower’s luck has changed, his songs pretty much remain the same--figuratively and literally. As he’s done for more than a decade, he built his set Tuesday around 1974’s “Bridge of Sighs” LP, playing as many selections from it as from “Passion.”

The old and new songs were rendered with essentially the same approach: His rhythm section locked into a rock-solid groove, over which Trower reeled off lengthy, Hendrix-inspired solos.

Trower explored every melodic and harmonic possibility of each song, occasionally running out of ideas before he ran out of riffs. The jamming was often bloated and meandering, and while Trower is fast and flashy, he was at least as deft and expressive on the slower, more atmospheric songs.

New singer Davey Pattison’s gruff, soulful singing helped keep things from becoming too one-dimensional and repetitious.