O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Liberal Dose of Exene : She Gives Voice to Political Frustration in Show With Rhino Label Mates

Unless things change drastically during the coming year, the 1992 Democratic national conven tion’s main purpose will be to anoint a candidate to walk the plank.

If the party’s liberal wing wants some music at this wake, Exene Cervenka would be the ideal choice. In a triple bill Thursday night at the Coach House that kicked off a national tour by Cervenka and her Rhino Records label mates Steve Wynn and Gregson & Collister, Exene was an often eloquent and poignant voice of committed but utterly defeated liberalism.

Political songs may talk about policy, but their true measure as music is how well they capture the human side--the feelings underlying the issues. At her best in an uneven set, Cervenka embodied the dejection, helplessness and bitterness of the radically inclined liberal under the Reagan-Bush ascendancy.

“She Wanted,” which could be a wryly melancholy self-portrait, depicted one possible refuge of a lost and angry lefty: combustive, apocalyptic revenge fantasies. “She wants to see the White House black as a scab / Its occupants as dead as the unknown soldier,” Cervenka crooned in the airy, lost-its-moorings voice that dominates her solo material.

The point isn’t that Cervenka wants her political foes dead (one suspects she would simply prefer them to be disgraced and voted out); what matters artistically is the song’s portrayal of a soul that has invested too much of itself in the political arena and been soured by too many defeats there.

“Leave Heaven Alone,” a plea against filling the skies with pollutants and advanced military hardware, was less a prayer than a confession of futility as Cervenka sang in the clenched but fragile voice of a partisan who knows the best she can do is keep the faith by staying aboard the sinking ship of her ideals.

This set offered no rallying reassurances for like-minded listeners.

Cervenka also excelled on a series of songs about sexual politics that opened her set. “Slave Labor” was a chiming rocker that captured the dilemma of a woman who wants to follow her own free will but knows that would threaten a romance she doesn’t want to sacrifice. Next came the humorous “White Trash Wife,” in which a restless woman indulges the urge for freedom with an adulterous fling. But freedom, these days, is just another word for everything left to lose--or at least Cervenka implied as much in the next song, “Curtains.” Extramarital fling accomplished, the errant wife finds that she has contracted AIDS. The song’s tone is absurdly, almost distractedly light and jaunty, as if Cervenka can’t bring herself to face the full impact of how depressing the situation really is.

The show suffered when Cervenka lost sight of the internal, psychic impact of politics and started launching broadsides. Her own “Here Come the Crucifiers” (an anti-censorship salvo) and a version of Hazel Dickens’ folk song “Will Jesus Wash the Bloodstains From Your Hands” (an anti-war pronouncement) demonized the opposition and said nothing about the singer’s own state of mind--except perhaps that its measure of righteous rectitude can match that of her most strident foes.

Sameness of mood and melody set in as Cervenka’s 70-minute show went on in a long succession of airy, off-kilter songs with vaguely countrified or rockabilly roots. Her detached manner didn’t help, and she never regained the intense focus that made the concert’s opening half so involving. Tony Gilkyson’s guitar playing became the chief reward as he tossed off tasty, lean licks with almost casual aplomb, throwing in some jagged dissonance to underscore the songs’ nervous, unsettled edge.

Wynn, the former Dream Syndicate leader, was breaking in a new band and a batch of new songs. The band was capable and well-rehearsed but tentative when it came to projecting the force and passion needed to make a concert more than a collection of well-played notes.

The new material was promising--continuing along the path of Wynn’s strong first solo album, “Kerosene Man.” Wynn often deals with characters facing desperate circumstances, and the show peaked with two songs of desperation--the quiet, played out, Cowboy Junkies-style exhaustion of “The Blue Drifter” and the stormy explosion of “405,” a new song in which the band gave a hint of the fire it may be able to produce as its members become more comfortable together.

As a solo act, Wynn is pursuing a more refined version of the garage rock the Dream Syndicate played. This time, a good deal of it was refined almost to the point of reserve. Extra grit and swagger is needed, but one senses that will be within this lineup’s reach when it becomes more at ease.

Clive Gregson and Christine Collister played the most satisfying set of what is billed as the RNA (for Rhino New Artists) “Real Music Revue.” The passion and energy that the British folk-rock duo put into their 40-minute show made it as real and immediate as anyone could wish. Collister’s husky, dusky, high-impact voice sounded like Christine McVie on steroids; Gregson was also an accomplished singer and played guitar with a controlled fire and hard-strumming abandon that showed he was paying attention during his and Collister’s sojourn in folk-rock maestro Richard Thompson’s band. What’s more, Gregson and Collister were much more at ease with each other and with the audience than either of the higher-billed acts.

Gregson, the duo’s songwriter, sometimes takes the easy way out with a lyric by settling for a quick, telegraphic cliche instead of delving deeper for a fresh phrasing (that tendency cropped up on a new number he co-wrote with Boo Hewerdine). But the emotional honesty of his songs is not compromised.

The two set-closers, “This Is the Deal” and “How Weak I Am,” were gems. “Deal” set a harrowing tale of marital violence to surprisingly breezy music, but Gregson’s acoustic guitar coda--all machine-gun chordal bursts and obsessive acceleration--drove home the gravity of the situation. Collister made “How Weak I Am,” an anguished, highly personal confession of inadequacy, into a song that reached out in a warm, general embrace. We’re all weak, all inadequate in the face of something as daunting as mortal life, was the resonant message of Collister’s fervent, encompassing reading. Gregson’s gorgeously rippling and reverberating electric-guitar accompaniment helped lift it out of a pit of loneliness and depression. Our weakness is our mutual bond, the song suggested. Because of it, we need each other--a prospect that is sad, but also comforting.