POP MUSIC REVIEW : Less Is More for the Solo Dave Sharp : The guitarist’s performance at the Coach House contrasts with the clangy backup of the Alarm. His approach was simple and unforced and established an intimacy with the audience.

Dave Sharp, the Alarm’s lead guitarist, did his marching without a drummer in a solo acoustic show Saturday night at the Coach House. But that wasn’t quite the same as marching to a different drummer.

Sharp, who does little of the songwriting and even less of the singing in the Alarm, devoted most of his 70-minute set to material from an upcoming solo album. In theme and outlook, most of those solo songs weren’t much different from the Alarm, a British band that always seems to be on the march with ringing anthems about the struggle for a better, brighter world.

Many of Sharp’s new songs shared the earnestness, exhortative quality and sense of embattled hopefulness familiar to Alarm fans--who turned out in warmly supportive fashion for the guitarist’s solo concert. But his humble, lone-folkie presentation did make for a healthy contrast. Where the Alarm often appears to be straining to make the Big Statement with its clanging sound (not to mention singer Mike Peters’ son-of-Bono vocal style), the solo Sharp was appealingly simple and unforced. The grainy burr in his throat gave his singing a warm, earthy feel as he accompanied himself with forthright strumming (no fancy picking) and an occasional blues-tinged wheeze on harmonica.

Sharp, who remains a member of the Alarm, told the audience that he has been recording his debut solo album in Nashville and that he also spent time last year in New York. The folk-blues thrust of his material reflected American sources, and so did his lyrics. One song chronicled a racially tinged slaying in New Jersey and its violent aftermath; another bewailed the reelection of Jesse Helms. But Sharp didn’t follow through successfully on the notion of working from topical, highly specific material. Instead of letting situations speak for themselves, he tended to veer quickly into Alarm-style benedictions.

That inclination cropped up in such ready-for-sing-along refrains as “All through the land, everybody lend a hand, God save somebody.” But performed solo, at least, even the broad exhortations didn’t sound strident or pretentious. Sharp displayed an unassuming, personable touch between songs, with no sign of being daunted, as some electric rockers are, by the prospect of facing an audience alone.

Sharp achieved a nice intimacy on “Homeless Child,” even though his characterization of a street kid tended toward the generic. Another highlight was the sardonic, dirge-like “New Age Eden,” which struck an emotionally complex balance between sadness and anger. The song found Sharp bitterly assailing indulgent self-involvement when there’s a stricken world out there to mend.

How all this will come out on Sharp’s album is anybody’s guess, but his solo concert suggests that folk simplicity would serve him better than the big beat of his regular band.

Some O.C. electric rockers went acoustic, too, as openers for Sharp. Naked Soul’s Mike Conley, backed by another member of his band, delivered a set of wintry songs about loss and emotional confusion. Although Conley confessed: “I don’t know if I could ever get used to this” acoustic setting, his 20-minute set was well received despite some technical problems and a few clinkers that marred the generally fluent lead guitar accompaniment.

Gary Williams and Lance Whitson, the two singer-songwriters who front Wood & Smoke, opened their acoustic set with a disastrous reading of “Wooden Ships,” the hippie-apocalypse vision originally recorded by Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Jefferson Airplane. The labored performance was full of the stridence and pretentiousness that are Wood & Smoke’s chief flaw. But having gotten that out of their systems, Williams and Whitson settled down to play a creditable set of their own songs in which intensity didn’t give way to grandstanding. They made up for the bad beginning with a rowsing, percussive finale that ended with the wry chant: “It’s so nice to be here, young and groovy.” Maybe they don’t really take themselves as seriously as they often appear to.

After Sharp finished, the Swamp Zombies came on to deliver a typically lighthearted nightcap to an otherwise sober-minded evening. The antic acoustic band’s newest member, guitarist Ray Vogelzang, seemed awfully reserved and clean-cut for a Swamp Zombie. The three senior partners may have to make him recite the refrain of a catchy new number the band debuted for a thinned-out crowd: “Life’s too short to do what adults are supposed to do.”