POP MUSIC REVIEW : It’s a Dark and Stormy Night When Xymox Takes the Stage

Xymox hails from the lowlands of Holland, but its music is ensconced firmly on Wuthering Heights.

Virtually everything Xymox played Wednesday night at Club Postnuclear in Laguna Beach was stormy and dark, with lyrics (in English) full of shadows, rain and loneliness. Building an architectural sound out of synth symphonics, glowering guitar textures and plangent, industrial-style dance beats, the five-member band played Bronte-saurus rock that put it solidly within the style of such British melancholics as New Order and the Cure.

Although the finer points of Xymox’s approach were drowned in the murk of the club’s iffy acoustics, the band had its moments. At its best, Xymox was able to brighten or energize gloom with snatches of better-than-average melody or passages of powerful, driving instrumental ensemble work. Singer Ronny Moerings, whose fluffed-up and thickly ponytailed hair style made him look like Davy Crockett in coonskin, adopted the plaintive, dramatically intoned style typical of the British brood-and-gloom school. Despite this lack of distinction in his singing, Moerings avoided the theatrical irony endemic to the genre, and sounded heartfelt in his angst.

Xymox would do well to give the spotlight more often to bassist Anke Wolbert. This Teutonic-looking beauty sang only two numbers, but her passionate reading of “7th Time,” full of dread and cries of sadness, was the show’s highlight.

Wolbert also sang the band’s new single, “Imagination,” an affirmative love song that is a small pop gem. In concert, “Imagination” should have been a catchy, leavening antidote to the surrounding gloom. But Xymox was unable to render the song’s key harmony hook, which on record features Wolbert’s double-tracked voice. The boys in the band need to use some imagination and work out an alternate vocal arrangement to support Wolbert on stage, or else cover the arching harmony parts with keyboards and guitars. As it was, a song that should have been a vibrant strong point fell utterly flat (to Xymox’s credit, it did not resort to the taped cheating that is creeping its way into some bands’ so-called live performances).

Xymox’s main, inescapable drawback was its lack of musical and emotional range. A monotonous slate of melancholy gray does not make for a consistently enjoyable show. These brooding Dutch folk need to get out of the rain, come down from the heath, and take time to smell the tulips.

Moev, the opening act, plays industrial-beat songs that concern themselves with sin and damnation. Strong stuff, you say? Well, singer Dean Russell’s dull, ineffectual performance made it tame indeed. Spending most of the show immobile, with hands on hips, this guy looked more like a wallflower looking uncomfortable at a dance than a rock singer exerting command over a stage. No wonder this Canadian band blanketed its whole bland act in a curtain of stage smoke thick and unrelenting enough to make the northern Rockies disappear.