Boyhood Mimicking Has Paid Off for Singer Ian Hunter

There is a song called “American Music” on the new album by Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson in which Hunter recalls--with a bit too much schmaltz--how he spent his British boyhood absorbing and mimicking all the great stuff from the States that he had in his record collection.

All that study paid off. Hunter has one of the most unpromising natural voices in rock music, a croaky, grainy, ungainly thing that half the time seems to be on the verge of falling off key. But ever since he emerged as the front man for Mott the Hoople 20 years ago, Hunter has been a first-class rock singer because he absorbed his listen-and-learn lessons so well. Lacking the ability of his models in soul music, country and rock, he nevertheless found ways to take usable bits from their methods and apply them in his own way.

Sharing bandleader billing this time with his longtime guitar partner Ronson, Hunter was as strong and resourceful as ever Tuesday night at the Coach House. It made for one of those splendid, varied concerts in which there was no predicting what would come next, and little doubt that, whatever it might be, it would be well worth hearing.

Hunter would sound foolish trying to do a straight-on gospel or soul imitation. But in songs like “Beg a Little Love,” one of four songs drawn from the new “YUI Orta” album, he borrowed what he could use profitably--repeating or stretching a phrase after the fashion of a talented R&B; singer, or tossing in some tent-revival dramatics from the gospel lexicon. What makes Hunter’s singing style his own is his way of gluing together all that he assimilates--the soul and country bits, the nods to the Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan vocal methods--with his own sense of very British theatricality.

Ronson may not have quite so instantly identifiable a personal style on the guitar as Hunter brings to his singing, but he has a broad range, a highly developed musicality, and consistently good taste. Teamed together, Hunter and Ronson were able to complement each other on songs like “Pain,” a chunky new love-hurts rocker in which Hunter howled the chorus--just the word pain --as if a real spasm had him in its grip. Then Ronson’s guitar came in with its own moaning cries and quick spiking notes that sounded the way exposed nerves would feel.

A little later, after Hunter had done his gospel-inspired routine on “Beg a Little Love,” Ronson swathed the enthusiastic audience with the lovely balm of “Sweet Dreamer,” a stately, lavishly constructed instrumental reworking of Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams.” It ended with Ronson coaxing delicate quivers from his electric guitar that sounded like a sighing country pedal steel. After that trip to sweet dreamland, Hunter, Ronson and their three young but accomplished band mates jolted things to sweaty alertness with a pounding blitz through “White Light, White Heat” by the Velvet Underground, with Ronson singing (well, growling, actually) the Lou Reed role. After that, a little comic relief seemed in order, so Ronson sang a cockney-and-Western ditty about babies and boozing.

Later in the show, when Hunter embarked on a long run of old faves from his solo career and Mott the Hoople days, there was no sense of chestnuts being served out of custom or obligation. He sang everything with conviction (except, perhaps, for a wee bit of joking during an otherwise fervent “All the Young Dudes”) and it all sounded as fresh and immediate as it ever has.

One could quibble that Hunter and Ronson stacked too many bitter and scornful songs about wrongdoing women early in the show and waited too long to get to more tender material, such as the lovingly rendered ballad “Irene Wilde.” They omitted “Sons ‘n’ Lovers,” a pretty and wistful love-lost song that is probably the best of the solid lot on “YUI Orta.” But balance ultimately was achieved with a long encore medley in which Hunter began and ended with “All the Young Dudes,” stringing folkish, Dylan-inspired songs such as “I Wish I Was Your Mother” in between.

Steve Jones, the former Sex Pistols guitarist, opened with a dull, monolithic set of cliched, riff-pounding metal that had less to do with his own past than with Ted Nugent’s. At least Nugent delivers low-IQ rock with high energy.

Jones’ big exertion of the evening was to toss his hair, rub his bare stomach or clutch at his crotch, which was tightly encased in black leather pants. Given his boorish sexual comments between songs (apparently inspired by the tepid response he was getting from a crowd that kept calling futilely for Sex Pistols songs), maybe it would have been better if Jones had kept his mouth tightly encased.