Pop Music Reviews : Everything but the Girl’s Content Doesn’t Match Form

Who would have ever guessed that one of the biggest, hippest trends of English pop music in the late 1980s would be the resurrection of cocktail-jazz balladry? The group Everything but the Girl prefigured the wave--or the quiet storm, if you will--taking its defiantly relaxed stand in the middle of the road more than five years ago. American success has been elusive, but the duo did sell out Tuesday’s Wiltern Theatre show well in advance.

In one sense, there’s something refreshing--and almost subversively utilitarian--in the idea of using this very traditional and traditionally lightweight music to talk about grown-up things in grown-up terms. Young pop fans who want to have their martini and drink it too can listen to music their parents would like, but with additional emotional fiber.

But if it works in theory, Everything but the Girl rarely manages to make form match content. Whatever key the songs might be in, whatever mood intended, the emotional register almost always sounds interchangeably pleasant and reticent.

The music isn’t really expressionistic, nor does it comment, ironically or otherwise, on the lyric--most of the time it just lopes or glides along pleasantly, content to offer smooth, jazzy stylings with light horns, light rim shots, understated vocals.

Though guest player Kirk Whalum offered some memorable turns on sax, the best moments in Tuesday’s concert came mid-show and again at the end when Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt played and sang as just a duo. Especially beautiful was an acoustic rendition of Chrissie Hynde’s “Kid” that brought out usually untold emotion in the song; too often in the rest of the show, their arrangements had the opposite effect.