POP MUSIC REVIEW : Summers Adds Rock Fire to Mix

Ex-Policeman Andy Summers’ current music, all of it vocal-less, falls in the netherworld cracks somewhere between new age and jazz fusion. His latest album, “The Golden Wire,” veers more toward the former, but his band’s performance of the same songs Tuesday at the Strand, happy to say, had more of the spirit of the latter genre--tougher, tenser, rockier, more (no pun intended) stinging.

On record, Summers opts for the “ambient”--i.e., somnambulistic--approach, just right for a wine-and-cheese party but not for a your-attention- please club showcase. Live, he’s put a lot more rock fire and kick into the erstwhile mellow music, partly by hiring an electronic percussionist and a very busy kit drummer to replace the tentative drum programming that is the album’s sorriest feature.

At its live best, Summers’ elixir suggests some kind of ‘90s lounge music, with “lounge” not necessarily used as a pejorative; the expansiveness and aggressiveness of the music seemed just right at times for the relaxed, open spaces of the Redondo Beach club.

The guitarist’s finest moments would come when, after spending minutes unassumedly establishing the melody, he would cut himself loose from it or go against its grain entirely. During one rocker, he let fly some tremolo bar effects that seemed to be in some kind of wild aural 3-D.

Yet the band--expert players all--was never encouraged to go with him on these excursions, and even Summers would quickly return from his dissonant flights of fancy to the basic structure of the song. Which makes one wonder if Summers’ talents are less suited to fusion, the full risks of which he seems wary to take, than to good old vocal pop songs, where his brief off-kilter explosions have always sounded incendiary indeed.

Summers is also set to headline tonight at the Coach House.