POP MUSIC REVIEW : Sheer Energy Propels a Reconstituted NPG

A lot has changed for National People’s Gang lately, but the Orange County rock band’s first concert with a revamped lineup made it clear Wednesday night that its high-energy, intense theatrics and considerable promise remain intact.

NPG’s 50-minute set at Bogart’s was its first show without founding guitarist Chad Forrello, who left the band about two months ago. His replacement, Michael Glines (younger brother of NPG’s bassist, Deyo Glines), brought a new, metal-edged dimension to the band’s sound.

Also playing his first show as a member of National People’s Gang was Scott Dibble, who has given up his old job as the group’s sound man in favor of an on-stage role playing keyboards and percussion. While Glines’ guitar style signals a prominent shift, Dibble’s playing accounted for small, subtle but useful shades of difference that reinforced NPG’s customary tribal rhythms and broadened the sound.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the central role of Chad Jasmine, who is probably the most charismatic and least conventional front man on the Orange County rock scene. Jasmine is essentially a performance artist with a heightened sense of the bizarre, who also happens to command a strong, unusual singing voice. At Bogart’s he was at the top of his form in terms of sheer energy and his ability to hold an audience rapt with contortions of voice and body.

With only two weeks of rehearsal behind it, the reconstituted NPG played a short set of 10 songs, only three of which were drawn from its two albums. The new material was wide-ranging, occasionally fascinating, but short on the melodic hooks that give the albums, “The Hard Swing” and “Orange,” a sense of balance between art-rock and more accessible pop.

NPG’s new approach emphasized sonic intensity over melody. Glines is a fast, accurate, detail-minded guitarist whose metallic flurries and wails recalled the style of Living Colour’s Vernon Reid. He and Jasmine made a fine tandem in several instrumental breaks that featured Glines’ guitar lines weaving rapidly around the thin, sustained snake-charmer tones that Jasmine called from his soprano saxophone.

Glines revealed another dimension, though. On several slow, moody pieces that were among the best of the new songs, he set aside his metal-style spray gun and dabbed on textures judiciously.

Some of Jasmine’s song lyrics and spoken performance set pieces were nearly unfathomable (one new number is about a pair of dinosaurs who encounter romantic difficulties and neuroses akin to those suffered by modern humans). Others were obvious and a little heavy-handed in their irony--for example, a spoken set piece about the endangered Earth. Still, the songs all came across with grabbing force, even when it was hard to figure out what they were getting at. And some of the performance bits, even when heavy-handed, employed memorable imagery (Jasmine spinning a globe on his finger, then fumbling it, to illustrate the planet’s environmental fragility).

NPG’s musicianship was better than ever. The only question now is whether it can come up with strong enough songs to expand on the base it has built with extensive touring over the past two years.

Forrello, who was in the audience, said he decided to leave NPG because of differences over the band’s musical direction. He and Jasmine had launched National People’s Gang together 8 years ago. “I still love him--we’ll always be family,” Forrello said. The guitarist said he is now looking for a new partner who can sing and write lyrics.

Hindu Rope Trick, a five-member band that includes NPG’s former bassist, Chuck Morris, played a set of songs that were so airy they just floated away. Harmonica was the main solo instrument, but the clean, dissonant rise and fall that seemed distinctive at first soon lapsed into sameness.

Also on the bill was Soul Scream, which featured a strong, steady flow of moody saxophone soloing by Kirk Tracy. The band could have used another lead instrument to help fill out the sound and provide some needed contrast and fire--the two guitars both played subordinate, too-polite rhythm roles instead of challenging Tracy’s sax. Half-sung, half-intoned vocals from Dave Tetreault and Larry Weatherford also were a bit short on presence but there were hints of potential for dramatic expression if the singers can muster a bit more muscle and fervor.

Soul Scream sometimes recalled such British bands as the Smiths and Blue Aeroplanes, but it also achieved an unusual jazzy, sultry, nighttime feel in its playing without sacrificing a low-key rock pulse, thanks to drummer Dave Tabone, who also plays in Eggplant.