POP MUSIC REVIEW : Philip Littell’s Cabaret Scene at Cafe Largo

Philip Littell is working a little territory all his own, a kind of modern cabaret-on-the-couch, transactional-analysis pop that is the perfect compliment for the post-modern supper club ambience of Cafe Largo in the Fairfax District, where he is playing Thursday night shows through July 27.

Littell is a strangely discomfiting mix of Pee-wee Herman and Noel Coward. Between his daunting deadpan and overcompensating goofiness, it’s hard to tell if his intent is sarcastic, sensitive or merely a bit paranoid. An excellent five-piece backing group, What Is Said, provided a spectrum of styles--from bossa nova horn charts to New Age-phased guitar to funky bass popping to bluesy swing--providing space for Littell’s vocals to lounge in as he crooned a ode to the moon or wearily told a prospective date, “Let’s Get Out of Here.”

Elsewhere Littell’s delivery ranged from a origami-thin tenor to a Bono-ish bellow, urgently addressing double-edged relationship gaps and generation traps as if he were working under the sword of Damocles. In “Young Men” and “Who Can Dance to This” Littell satirizes the premium put on youth culture, yet it’s a culture Littell obviously desires to participate in even as he quotes Jean Cocteau: “The only thing that never changes is the avant-garde.” Appropriately enough, it’s in that same avant-garde--or at least what passes for it in Los Angeles these days--where Littell has taken to wearing his irony on his sleeve.