POP MUSIC REVIEW : Tuxedo Cowboy’s Niceness Is a Refreshing Alternative

Amid a torrent of angry rappers, crotch-grabbing mega-stars (thanks a lot, Michael and Madonna) and angst- ridden rockers, a music fan has to do a lot of sifting and straining to discover such old-fashioned qualities as sweetness and gentle charm.

That is what makes Tuxedo Cowboy one of the most appealing nuggets to have surfaced this year on the local music scene. The Orange County trio’s idiosyncratic blend of folk, classical music and a dab of country isn’t exactly what scouts from the big record companies are after these days, but the group’s unstudied niceness and lovely musicality make it a refreshing alternative at a time when niceness and loveliness seem to be fading from our social fabric.

Playing Wednesday night at UC Irvine’s cozy Zot Spot Cafe, Tuxedo Cowboy’s singer, Debra Anne Suhr, was as guileless and open as they come.

“We’re gonna try to win your hearts tonight and go home best friends,” the transplanted Montana native said sweetly at the outset--a declaration that would be the sheerest show biz hokum if she hadn’t conveyed it with the utmost warmth. Only the flintiest heart would have failed to have been warmed just a little during the best moments of the 75-minute show that followed.

Sweetness abounded in the music as well as in Suhr’s homey manner. Tuxedo Cowboy is a band that positively lilts, with richly melodic songs swept along by the interplay of Greg Bishop’s flute, Steve Velez’s cello and anchored by Suhr’s acoustic rhythm guitar. Tuxedo Cowboy lilts along a fine line, though: Sweetness overdone can become sentimentalized and cloying.

Two qualities kept Tuxedo Cowboy on the right side of that line: the genuine prettiness of its melodies (sentimentality requires falseness, and, as the poet says, beauty is truth), and the strong, honest substance of Suhr’s best lyrics.

While a few sketchier songs about love’s pitfalls didn’t go beyond self-help sloganeering, most of the time Suhr was able to dig deep into the psychology and emotion that underly our ability, or inability, to give ourselves over to love.

“It Took More Love” was a fine example of that complexity and depth. With a good visual eye and a knack for painting a character, Suhr introduced a troubled woman who agonizes quietly as she tries to explain to her lover the hurt she absorbed as an adopted child, and how lingering insecurity still dogs her. She followed it with “Woman of the Heart,” a tender, affirmative, instantly winning song whose protagonist breaks through similar insecurities to find happiness in love.

In songs like “Black Haired Beauty,” about a rape victim’s unshakable anxieties, and “I Am Homeless,” with its almost Brechtian edge, Tuxedo Cowboy explored bitter realities that gave welcome thematic shading to the group’s basically warm and hopeful outlook. Suhr even showed a small ironic streak in “Life’s a Bitch,” a humorous poke at the materialistic grasping that is the downside of the California dream: “Life’s a bitch, then you move to California/Land of milk and honey, land of too much money.”

As enjoyable as the warm glow of flute, cello and a clear, pure voice are (Suhr only occasionally resorted to country twang inflections, sticking mainly to clean folk phrasings or singing in a dramatic vibrato that might serve her well in musical theater), that glow was too constant. Tuxedo Cowboy could have used some rougher, even ragged touches for balance (of course, it’s not easy to make a flute sound rough and ragged).

The sighing blues intonation Suhr dabbed onto the end of “Turn You Away” pointed in a promising direction that could merit further exploration, and the same song’s chorus proved that flute, cello and acoustic guitar can generate rocking intensity--another avenue worth probing. On “Black Haired Beauty,” Bishop and Velez both provided tense flurries of notes that helped build the song’s anxious tone, but they stopped short of the wild attack and dissonant colors that might really have driven home the torment the song’s violated protagonist feels. Similarly, the trio couched “I Am Homeless” in a plaintive, somber setting that conveyed sadness, but not the ugliness described in the lyrics.

By generating more turbulence from time to time, Tuxedo Cowboy could make the sweet, gentle qualities that are at the core of its appeal stand out all the more.