Pop Music Reviews : The Rembrandts Ignore Strengths

The Rembrandts’ current single “Just the Way It Is, Baby” is a gem of a pop record, every measured strum building on a bedrock throb to unfold new emotional layers and raise the intensity.

At the Roxy on Wednesday, the Rembrandts had an even better idea: a spoken interlude to lead back into the main chorus. But singer Danny Wilde went about it all wrong, trivializing the song by trying to be cute and casual instead of bearing down on the mood. That summarized the Rembrandts’ problem as performers: In their eagerness to entertain, Wilde and his partner, Phil Solem, lose sight of their strengths.

The Rembrandts--who played the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Thursday--create dense, formal pop music that’s more massive than brisk. But even at its most grandiose, their debut album “The Rembrandts” has a relaxed, loose quality, a modesty of tone and a spaciousness in the sound, with plenty of room for the vocal harmonies at the heart of the music.

At the Roxy, the group seemed compelled to make something bigger of the songs. The two front men and their three backing musicians overplayed almost every selection, inflating the songs into anonymity, grooming them into slick exercises, giving them no room to breathe.

Wilde and Solem tried to convey a casual charm through impromptu patter that only got in the way. They’d be better off just digging in and playing their songs.

Michael McDermott, who opened both the Roxy and the Coach House shows, couldn’t quiet the chattering Roxy crowd with his exceedingly derivative Springsteen/Dylan music, but he did a good job of drowning folks out when he cranked up the vocal and guitar intensity.