Pop Reviews : Strummer: Crying and Rocking at Coach House

“Before you’re gonna rock you’re gonna cry some,” former Clash leader Joe Strummer told his audience near the end of his show at the Coach House. “Let’s all cry together.”

With that, Strummer went into “Straight to Hell,” the Clash’s bittersweet Requiem for a winding-down world, and followed it with two more Clash linchpins: “Brand New Cadillac” and “I Fought the Law.” In that one memorable sequence Monday, Strummer delivered the blend of emotional ache and emotional release that put his old band at the very eye of the rock storms in its early-’80s heyday.

At this point, the singer--who also headlines the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium tonight--is likely hoping to work the same magic with Joe Strummer songs rather than Clash music. That day is probably a while off, but his show in San Juan Capistrano--Strummer’s long-awaited first local date since the Clash flamed out in ‘85--satisfied Strummer’s need to air his obscure post-Clash music and his fans’ desire to clobber one another during “London Calling.”

To say that the set was a career summation is putting it mildly. Strummer did Clash songs and his newest solo songs. He did a song he co-wrote with Big Audio Dynamite, and he did tunes from the movies “Sid and Nancy,” “Walker” and “Permanent Record.” The only thing missing was the pre-Clash 101’ers.

But it wasn’t a resoundingly triumphant affirmation of the new Joe Strummer Era. The songs from the current “Earthquake Weather” album fit into the set as lesser successors to the Clash legacy, and marked improvements over the material he has been scattering here and there. He is regaining focus and rediscovering purpose in these slices of modern Angst , dreams of escape and homages to hipster heroes.

Strummer’s new, L.A.-bred band, though, is still finding its footing. Ex-Red Hot Chili Pepper drummer Jack Irons cracked the beats, ex-Thelonious Monster Zander Schloss played in a speedy, stinging style, and Lonnie Marshall provided supple bass lines, but it added up to a sound that was virtually all rhythm--it almost seemed as if an instrument was unplugged. That’s fine for the purpose of driving Strummer’s blistered voice to its limits, but now and then it would be nice to hear a riff or a hook.

Still, Strummer can’t help but be a riveting figure on stage: wiry, uncompromisingly intense, a no-nonsense man with a mission, even if he is not sure what it is. At the Coach House, he was most often a study in concentration, screwing his eyes shut and holding a loose fist against his temple, as if bracing himself in the din and fixing on the essence of the song.

His new music might not bring back the old glory, but it will take worse work to knock him out of the rock pantheon.