POP MUSIC REVIEW : BoDeans Shine at the Whisky

You don’t have to hail from the heartland to hate heartland rock, but it helps. It’s gotten so it’s hard for a Midwestern boy to enjoy the simple pleasures of a small-town gas station or a desert sunset without having the scenery spoiled by all the myth-making perpetrated on the landscape by the Men Who Would Be Bruce.

The BoDeans indulge in their share of that, and can slip into melodramatic cliche, but their fun, casual intelligence makes them refrain from turning real-life three-minute songs into rootsy rock operettas.

At the Whisky on Tuesday, the hard-working Milwaukee group once again proved not only tolerable for the genre but terrific, even while further reinforcing their move away from likable, loping country touches toward a rock-radio-ready, anthemic style. They sang of lost love and parched land with none of the self-seriousness of a Mellencamp. With these guys, you would willingly visit the land of drought and hard drink.

The credits for their third album, “Home,” indicate that it was cut “live” in the studio. You can figure then that in concert you’re due for something at least as good, which in this case is pretty good indeed. In addition to old favorites, the 105-minute set included all of the songs from the current LP (plus one of the CD bonus tracks), from the Springstone-age rave-up “Good Work” to the accordion-accompanied waltz “Beaujolais.”

Dueling lead singers Sam Llanas (once described by Robbie Robertson as sounding like an old woman--but a soulful old woman, mind you) and Kurt Neumann actually both sounded less ravaged than they do on the album, where they were probably trying to sound ravaged. By the time their voices soared together on the closing refrain of “You don’t get much without giving,” they had put their money where their mouths were.