POP REVIEW : DURAN DURAN AT FORUM

Who would have thought you’d pine for the good ol’ days of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf”? That was the effect of waiting out the 90 minutes it took the English group to get to that song Friday at the Forum. In the meantime, the band once proclaimed the Fab Five--now officially down to three after the highly publicized defections of guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor last year--focused on more recent pseudo-R&B; material notable only for its lack of character.

When it did get to “Wolf,” it was something of a revelation. The way the band is currently constituted--singer Simon Le Bon, bassist John Taylor and keyboardist Nick Rhodes supported by a seven-person team including a crack three-piece horn section and ex-Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo--is an improvement over the postured teeny-bopper flash of its past. Both the musical arrangements and visual style (save for a few moments of cheesy theatrics) are now enticingly straightforward. In that setting, “Wolf”--not a bad song to begin with--has never sounded better.

But, as the set was dominated by such newer, dull songs as “Notorious” and “Skin Trade,” the overall impression was of an outfit that has run out of steam, the screaming adulation of the young crowd notwithstanding. (The band also sold out the Forum on Saturday.) An encore of Jules Shear’s Bangles hit “If He Knew What He Wants”--with the Bangles themselves helping out on vocals--only stressed how weak the Durannies’ current material is by comparison.