Making a Case for a Quiet, Simpler Musical Style : Pop: Peter Case, who took along a drummer and bassist on his recent North American tour, will go it alone at the Pub at Cal State Fullerton.

It’s a matter of decibels versus intimacy, embellishment versus the sparse, the big versus the small.

Since first trading in his rock ‘n’ roll band for a harmonica and an acoustic guitar five years ago, Peter Case has vascillated over which part of his musical self to acknowledge--the side blaring the Kinks and the Outsiders, or the quieter side, the barren vocals and strumming a la Jimmy Rodgers and Woody Guthrie.

Case’s two folk-flavored albums marked a dramatic artistic departure from his earlier work with the Plimsouls, hook-laden apostles of guitar rock, and his beginnings with the punk-edged Nerves. Still, both the newer records have found him blending solo acoustic ventures with hardened rave-ups energized by a full corps of backing musicians.

On a just-completed tour of the North American club circuit, Case took along a drummer and a bassist and his own electric guitar. “I wanted to play again with this drummer I grew up with in Chicago (Mike Bannister),” he explained this week, “and I wanted to play the electric guitar again.”

Now, though, he’s back on the solo road: Two shows tonight at the Cal State Fullerton Pub (an old Plimsouls haunt) will feature Case, pure and simple. It seems that Woody and Jimmy are playing louder in his head than Ray Davies is at the moment.

Case said he has written a batch of new songs that are more personal than any of his previous work. They’ll show up on his next record, due this summer, and he plans to try some of them out tonight.

“Playing with a band is fun,” he said, “but it can get in the way”--especially of lyrics. “I’m about writing songs. Songs are the whole art.”

“I like to hear stuff that’s stripped down,” he continued. He thinks the basic singer-song relationship is the essence of “pure. Sometimes,” he added, “I’ll get into the studio to do a record and feel I ought to flesh this out a little more, but I really feel best about doing things solo.”

But as for the future? He paused, pondered a while and asked a question of his own:

“Who knows?”

Peter Case plays tonight at 8 and 10:30 p.m. in the Pub at Cal State Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Tickets: $5 in advance; $6 at the door. Information: (714) 773-3501.