POP MUSIC REVIEW : Caterwaul Show Washes Out Mystery

Caterwaul makes music that thrives in the dark--hypnotic, impressionistic waves of sound that can conjure some interesting dream images and nocturnal landscapes.

It is hard to fathom why a band whose whole method is mystery would want to play a show with the house lights on, but that’s what Caterwaul did Wednesday as it headlined the weekly Club Tangent alternative-rock night at the Marquee.

Watching Caterwaul from under the glow of red-coated electric bulbs was like trick-or-treating at noon--the light washed all the mystery out of the experience. Any images the songs and sounds might have conjured were expunged like snapshots in a popped-open camera.

The only conceivable excuse for keeping a nightclub lit like a cafeteria might be a band’s intention to turn a concert into a communal experience. But singer Betsy Martin made only tentative attempts to connect with a sparse audience of perhaps 100 people. Caterwaul’s four members performed in self-contained fashion, wrapped in their own reveries, or perhaps in their own cocoons of boredom.

It’s not that the Los Angeles band played badly. Guitarist Mark Schafer and bassist Fred Cross set up the basic moody soundscape--Schafer with echoing sheets of distorted sound, and Cross with a steady thrum (the bassist played in a hunched-over position that would instill high hopes in the heart of any business-starved chiropractor).

Martin had no trouble reproducing the strange, incantational singing that is the focus of Caterwaul’s two albums, “Pin & Web” and the newly released “Portent Hue.” She has a rangy voice that can move with sure pitch and control from a cracked, cronelike husk to a disembodied Appalachian falsetto. On record it is evocative. In this uninspired concert it was merely unusual.

Unusual, but not unique. Martin’s tone recalls Marianne Faithfull’s memorable wreck of a voice and the frayed, nervous charge in the singing of Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh. Unlike Faithfull and Hersh, whose material fully supports their pained vocal contortions, it is sometimes hard to detect the reasons for Caterwaul’s wailing. Martin’s songs obviously are set at emotional extremes, but the lyrics offer few hints as to why. In concert, Martin’s occasional dancer’s whirls and tosses of a full blond mane of curls weren’t enough to illuminate the cryptic codes in her music.

It would have helped if Caterwaul, which originated in Phoenix, had concentrated on its best material. But, with the exception of one folk-style ballad and the charging set-closing rocker “Stumped,” it stayed with more shapeless, mid-tempo mood pieces that devolved into sameness. Playing a stingy 50-minute set, Caterwaul couldn’t be bothered to play stronger numbers like “Manna and Quail,” leaving it to the club disc jockey to toss that tune on after the show was over.

The second-billed Pivot Foots are a local band whose album, “Wingless Birds of Flight” is full of intelligent, wryly written songs and enjoyable stylistic dabbling. But the Long Beach trio hasn’t yet found its footing as a stage band. There are plenty of punch lines and comic observations in the songs written by brothers Brent and Blair Walker, but Blair’s harsh, husky voice was blunt and straining when nuance and control would have served the songs better. To pull it off live, the Pivot Foots will have to establish more confident vocal and instrumental chops so they can concentrate freely on projecting the personality that abounds in their songs.

Opening band Naked Soul showed some of the virtues and vices of the Replacements. The four-member band had a raw, edgy attack, and singer Mike Conley achieved an Angst -ridden emotionalism reminiscent of the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg. Like the Replacements, Naked Soul also showed an inclination to indulge itself in sloppy, amateurish clowning. Unlike the Replacements, who have largely renounced those old ways, Naked Soul is totally unproven and can’t afford to waste its listeners’ time.