Pop Music : Jezebel: Teen Romance With Jay Aston

During the past few years, Gene Loves Jezebel has devolved from a modestly hip, nominally sophisticated alternative-rock band into the glam-rock group of choice for junior high-school girls who smoke cigarettes in the restroom. Which is not necessarily to say that GLJ has gotten worse--merely more populist.

At the Universal Amphitheatre on Saturday, lead singer Jay Aston showed he knows how to please a crowd. Making his first local appearance with the British band since his twin brother Michael left the group, Aston stepped eagerly into the spotlight, rubbing his chest and playing with his fly to the delight of thousands of screaming young females.

Though he could have used some help with his singing from Milli Vanilli’s technicians, he glided gamely through Gene Loves Jezebel’s impressive catalogue of shoulda-been hits, from the erotic “Motion of Love” to the palpitating “Desire,” to the pretty “Tangled Up in You” from the new album “Kiss of Life.” By the time Michael Aston joined his former bandmates for an encore of “Heartache,” he was no longer missed. Los Angeles loves Jay.

The second-billed Special Beat, a sort of ska supergroup, kept the audience on its feet for an hour with burbling renditions of some genre classics, but it had little new of interest to offer. Seattle’s Posies opened the show with a palette of scruffy pop that falls somewhere between the Raspberries and the Replacements--in other words, practically perfect.