POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Morrissey Mania in Costa Mesa

Self-avowed isolationist Morrissey is probably the first pop star of note since the late Singing Nun to have publicly proclaimed celibacy as a lifestyle choice. Such extreme pronunciations, along with lyrics full of antisocial, self-inflicted solitude, have diminished his phenomenal sex appeal not the slightest.

Unabated Morrissey mania was in full swing Saturday at the sold-out Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, where the shrieking was often at British Invasion volume level and streams of fans of both genders attempted, sometimes successfully, to get past security and lunge across the stage at their loner hero.

Girls (and boys too) perhaps dream that surely they could seduce Morrissey, just as grown men still fantasize--according to Gloria Steinem’s famous theory--that they could have saved Marilyn Monroe had they the chance.

Steinem probably won’t get around to writing a book about why a new generation of 20-ish kids has developed the hots for this iconoclastic Englishman instead of someone more likely and more libidinous, so we’re left to theorize our own reasons for his appeal:

* Morrissey’s image of indeterminate sexuality and his somewhat homoerotic poses--along with lyrics that almost always express some sort of victimization, real or imagined--implicitly foster an attitude of increased tolerance, comforting at the age of heightened identity crisis.

* What he’s going for is some sort of arch, oversensitive, occasionally hostile combination of Ray Davies, Oscar Wilde, Bryan Ferry and James Dean, mixed very dry.

* In an age of supposed increased social consciousness, he’s almost entirely self-obsessed--and proud of it--in a way that only the young, unattached and prematurely world-weary can afford to be.

* Not unimportantly, with his bare chest, pompadour and pout, he also happens to look like a Bruce Weber or Herb Ritts fever dream.

Inasmuch as Morrissey looks as if he was created expressly to be photographed, Saturday’s show--the first L.A.-area date of his first post-Smiths tour (which also included a sold-out gig on Sunday at the Forum)--was a perfect chance to catch him even more in his element than usual.

The performance was being filmed for a feature documentary, and in addition to roaming cameramen, technicians darted about, thrusting light meters into the air, sometimes right in front of the star’s face. The circus of filming activity almost seemed like an added ironic commentary on his aura of narcissism.

Except that Morrissey’s shtick is already its own ironic self-commentary, what with earnest yet still tongue-in-cheek titles like “(I’m) The End of the Family Line” and “There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends,” half-self-mocking, half-not.

And surely no one took it too seriously when the crooner would quit dancing, fall to the floor and tiredly rest his overtaxed noggin on the monitor, as if sacrificially bearing both his and the crowd’s collective Angst .

The musical problem with too much of his solo work is its lack of edge, with alternately pleasant or portentous pop melodies and sweet, featherweight arrangements that make virtually every song sound satirical whether intended so or not. Put simply, the Smiths rocked, but Morrissey, left to his own fey devices, rarely does.

Interestingly, though, he’s shunned keyboards this tour, towing a four-piece band that looked right out of a rockabilly scene--and occasionally played like it too, in its own soft way, as on “King Leer,” which featured a stand-up bass break, or “Family Line,” which almost sounded like a tremolo-led Chris Isaak ballad.

Likable L.A. singer Phranc opened this gender-bending bill with a solo set that included characteristic one-joke goofs like “Gertrude Stein” (her pointless, lesbian recasting of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso”) as well as more endearingly serious material like “I’m Not Romantic” and the AIDS-themed “Outta Here.”

The audience, perhaps not knowing whether to take its cues from Morrissey’s implied tolerance or his oft-stated lyrical hostility, split between those enthusiastically supporting Phranc and those shouting her off the stage.