Upbeat Awakening to ‘Primal Dream’ : Chamber rock: Richard Barone’s two latest albums were influenced by the Beatles and classical music. He will play Tuesday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

When rocker Richard Barone was a small boy, his mother warned him that comparisons with Paul McCartney would be unavoidable.

It wasn’t that Barone, who plays Tuesday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, was already a budding pop Mozart. It had something to do with Barone’s facial features--high arching brows, large eyes and a long oval face that were bound to make people think of the cutest Beatle.

Still, facial topography aside, Barone, now 29, has emerged as an inventive, highly melodic pop craftsman whose music is full of Beatlesque currents. His albums “Cool Blue Halo” and the new “Primal Dream” both merge rock song structures with classical instrumental shadings, a path first blazed by the Beatles on songs like “Eleanor Rigby” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Barone’s touring ensemble includes a cellist whose lines are woven into every song, ballads and rockers alike. A vibraphone player provides further unorthodox accents.

A big Beatles fan (though he says he much preferred John Lennon and George Harrison to his look-alike), Barone was well aware of their work as a reference point for incorporating cello into a rock band. But on the phone recently from his apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village, he said the idea of weaving cello into his own music didn’t arise until he came across a cellist named Jane Scarpantoni playing rock in a New York club about three years ago.

“It was seeing this particular cellist improvising and really rocking on cello” that made Barone want to depart from the basic guitars-and-drums setup in which he had been working over the course of four releases with his band, the Bongos. With Scarpantoni, acoustic guitarist Nick Celeste and percussionist Valerie Naranjo, Barone, who sings and plays electric guitar, formed a chamber rock ensemble.

Originally, he looked at the group as a side project to the Bongos, with whom he had made a name as a singer and writer of sharp pop songs. “I wanted to have a really flexible format to illustrate my songs, instead of bass, drums, two guitars. I didn’t want (a basic rock band) sound to dictate the songs.”

Barone had formed the Bongos after moving from Tampa, Fla., to New York when he was 19. He wanted to pursue his rock ambitions in a city that had produced such personal favorites as Television and the Patti Smith Group. When he realized that rents were far cheaper across the Hudson River in Hoboken, N.J., Barone and the other Bongos moved into an $88-a-month flat there. They found themselves in the middle of a burgeoning early-’80s rock scene: Frank Sinatra’s hometown was spawning a number of other melodic, ‘60s-influenced rock bands including the Smithereens, the dBs and the Feelies.

Eventually, Barone decided that playing with his chamber group in small clubs was more rewarding than touring with the better-established Bongos. The live “Cool Blue Halo” record, released in 1987, received good, critical notices and gave Barone a chance to tour the United States and Europe.

For “Primal Dream,” Barone decided that the songs he had written needed the punch of a rock rhythm section to augment the delicate pop ensemble. “Dream” begins with fast, urgent songs that present love as a transforming, redeeming force. But as the sequence continues, Barone’s outlook grows murkier and more chastened, as if the harsher realities of love are wearing against his romantic idealist’s convictions.

There is an upsurge near the end, but Barone refuses to go for a conventionally optimistic ending. The final song, “Roman Circus,” is a dark, stormy, latently violent dance with the cello and bass circling furiously together in evocation of inner chaos:

There’s a Roman circus in my mind.

There’s a Roman circus in my mind.

I didn’t mean to hurt you, but something needs to hurt you

In my mind .

“It’s not a Hollywood ending,” Barone acknowledged. But he maintained that the overall mood of “Primal Dream” parallels his own outlook: “It’s determined to be hopeful.” Despite the ominous finale, he said, “I don’t want to leave you with the idea that I think everything is a downward spiral. I have a determination to be hopeful and upbeat.

“It doesn’t always turn out like ‘Roman Circus.’ I think ‘Primal Dream’ is the second in a trilogy--’Roman Circus’ is not the end of the story. Maybe I want to leave the listener hanging until the next album.”

Richard Barone and Love of Fire play Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $10. Information: (714) 496-8930.