Pop Music Reviews : The La’s: Tuneful, Flat-Footed at the Fonda

Innocence and sincerity can be refreshing traits in a rock band, but when it’s time to deliver on stage, you have to be able to convey them. In their L.A. debut on Tuesday at the Henry Fonda Theatre, the La’s played an inert show in which the only point of contact was singer Lee Mavers’ promising song-craft.

The Liverpool band’s music appears to be a reaction to the high-tech eclecticism dominating English rock, as it leapfrogs back a generation and more. The acoustic-guitar strum and slapping drums evoked England’s folky, pre-rock skiffle sound, and the yearning tunefulness stirred up the pure pop tradition of the Mersey Beat bands and other ‘60s icons: Hollies, Kinks, Monkees, Beach Boys.

But the quartet was so flat-footed and bland that the music rarely came alive. Mavers’ mushy vocals had none of the character and broad locution that enliven his singing on the group’s first album, “The La’s,” and no one filled the gap with assertive playing. The La’s didn’t have much to say to the audience either. Whether the remoteness was a sign of shyness, nervousness or dullness, it came off as indifference.

Second-billed Straitjacket Fits didn’t have much personality or originality either, but the New Zealanders forged some impressively atmospheric sounds in a post-R.E.M. vein.