Pop Music : McGuinn’s Touch of Quality Continues

Critics are always hailing music that seeks to prod, challenge, confront and surprise. Well, here’s a big hurrah for an evening with Roger McGuinn that took us away from the tumult of the new and spoke with a welcome voice of constancy and reassurance.

Backed by the Headlights, an unheralded but skillful young Tampa band, McGuinn played old Byrds songs and new, Byrds-like songs on Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, without a hint of innovation or re-evaluation.

Unhip? Maybe, given a rock ethic that promotes constant change. But McGuinn’s committed, lovingly rendered recreation of his signature sound suggested that there is such a thing as enduring quality and that works that possess it can be left to stand without apologies.

Enduring themes help. Those rich harmonies and that glistening guitar sound might have made some in the audience feel nostalgic, but songs of alienation and self-examination figured prominently in the 80-minute set.

McGuinn’s voice, full of the “high lonesome sound” he sings about in “King of the Hill,” was the reedy, trembling voice of a man reaching for something to hold on to in a precarious world. The comforting, enduring sound that cushioned it suggested that those who reach out may find something firm to grasp, after all. McGuinn concludes his string of four Southern California shows tonight at the Spreckels Theatre in San Diego.