Pop Music : Indigo Girls Are Colorless

The Indigo Girls are so acutely earnest that one feels more than a little churlish finding fault with them, especially in light of the rapturous reception the Georgia folk duo received Saturday night at the sold-out Wiltern Theatre.

But for all the glorious, gossamer guitar interplay from the pair, the music often rang hollow. In almost all the compositions, whether written by Amy Ray or Emily Saliers, labored, humorless lyrics bog down universally appealing sentiments and pretty melodies. Such lines as “My life is part of the global life” and “A moment of peace is worth every war behind us” are typical of the dewy-eyed, greeting-card verse the Indigo Girls too often deliver.

The show was deficient in form as well as content. Minus the band that sparks such spirited tunes as “Hammer and a Nail” on their latest album, “Nomads Indians Saints,” the Indigo Girls instead relied on the accompaniment of a saxophone, a rather ill-advised choice for sing-along-in-school-variety folk music. Happily, last year’s breakthrough “Closer to Fine” single--an airy, delicate composition with more inventive lyrics than their usual--still sounded, well, close to fine.

By the end of the set, anyone possessing an ounce of cynicism could have foreseen the encore: a cover of the Youngbloods’ 1969 flower-power hit, “Get Together,” with the word brother changed to sister. The only wonder is that they didn’t follow it up with “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”

While less interesting live than on record, the opening act, the Rave-Ups, offered tightly wound songs that cleverly temper ‘60s-style psychedelia with a healthy dose of contemporary craft.