POP MUSIC REVIEW : Acoustic Pop’s New Generation

At just about the point when ‘60s nostalgia was beginning to fade away like the lambada, what do we get? The environment starts going to pot, the country plunges into war and the light at the end of the tunnel looks exceedingly dim. Talk about deja vu.

Does that mean there’s a whole new generation of Dylans, Neil Youngs and Country Joes springing up to deal with these issues? Sunday’s concert at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall suggested just such an eventuality.

The program featured four singer/songwriters whose careers have been simmering for the last few years in a growing network of regional, new acoustic music, and they worked together with the ease of musical siblings:

David Wilcox, the good-looking straight-arrow with the mellow voice of a ‘90s crooner and the soul of a radical. Patty Larkin, an intense kid sister, her voice fired with passion, her guitar a jumble of rhythmic strums and slaps. John Gorka, the dark outsider, never quite in sync with the others, his rich, dark baritone the perfect vehicle for the sometimes scathing passions of his songs. And, finally, Christine Lavin, an irrepressible imp ready to do whatever it takes--”folk rap,” comedy numbers, baton twirling--to reach her audience.

The songs began with a strong emphasis on inner probings, sometimes whimsical, sometimes not. Gorka touched one base with “The Pilot Light Is Out on Our Oven . . . of Love” and another with “I Saw a Stranger With Your Hair.” Lavin was droll with “Sensitive New Age Guy” and warily romantic on “The Kind of Love You Never Recover From.”

Wilcox (whose album “How Did You Find Me Here” recalls both James Taylor and John Sebastian) moved into issue-oriented themes with a Gulf War-oriented song whose key line suggested that “These dreams of the Wild West are leading us astray.” Larkin countered with “Metal Drums,” a powerful description of toxic-waste dumping in Massachusetts.

The long, powerful evening of songs may not have been quite enough to suggest a major emergence of new acoustic music, but it did suggest that something’s happening out there--something very interesting, indeed.