POP MUSIC REVIEW : The Silos Band Is No Flash in the Pan

Rolling Stone magazine’s annual critics poll has a strong track record over the last decade when it comes to spotlighting new talent. Among the distinguished selections for best new American band: R.E.M. and Los Lobos.

So, the eager crowd Monday night at Bogart’s in Long Beach expected big things when the magazine’s latest nomination for best new band stepped on stage shortly after midnight.

That’s not the best way to approach a show by the Silos. The New York-based quartet isn’t the kind of flashy or even wholly distinctive outfit that makes a b-i-g initial impression. Unlike the many rock bands that speak in exclamation points, the Silos lean more toward italics and other gentler forms of expressions.

The band showed it was capable of turning up the volume and intensity when it went into numbers like “Get Back My Name,” a spunky narrative with lots of bluesy Rolling Stones--the band--combustion.

Mostly, however, the Silos deal in softer tones as they explore such personal matters as commitment and family ties. The songs revolve around losses (“All Falls Away” and “Memories”) and comforts (“Margaret” and “For Always”) in ways that celebrate emotions without overly sentimentalizing them. There is also a layer of darkness and mystery behind what appear to be disarming surfaces.

While the sentiments are often tender, the band is not timid. You take a chance on losing much of your audience when you start doing acoustic ballads in a rock ‘n’ roll club around 1 a.m., and there were some exits when singer-guitarist Walter Salas-Humara attempted two of them.

But the songs themselves were affecting and the willingness to inject them in the middle of a set suggests dedication and ambition, frequent hallmarks of a great band.

The group, however, could pay some attention to its presentation. Salas-Humara and sidekick Bob Rupe (an especially persuasive singer who picks up the intensity level in the show whenever he handles the lead vocal) knew each other back in Florida before they hooked up again a few years ago and started this band.

So, it was surprising Monday to see them make so little contact on stage. It wasn’t just that they stood at separate microphones, but that they so rarely worked off each other as musicians in ways that would reenforce the warmth and sense of community in their music.

By failing to inject a touch of visual personality, the band accentuates the band’s lack of strong, identifiable musical identity--a trait that can cause a casual listener to wrongly assume there is nothing of originality and substance in the band’s music.

The Silos’ music is a rich, but somewhat anonymous merger of many of the most rewarding strains of traditional American rock. The band has been compared by critics to groups ranging from Creedence Clearwater Revival and Crazy Horse to the Velvet Underground and the Replacements--and there were times Monday when members of the crowd must have thought the Silos were doing cover tunes.

If you stick with the Silos, however, the band’s combination of strong songwriting craft and heartfelt (as opposed to simply topical or proven) themes adds up to a satisfying package and suggests a highly promising future. The band will perform live on Deirdre O’Donoghue’s show at 10 tonight on KCRW-FM and will be at the Music Machine on Thursday.