POP MUSIC REVIEW : Conley’s Show Offers Very Flu Moments to Savor : The country singer’s Santa Ana performance is cold, weak and emotionally rundown, and his band delivers characterless sound. But the songs they play are unworthy of much effort anyway.

It is only things like getting the flu, the theory goes, that helps one appreciate how fine it is to feel well. And perhaps without such enervated, unaspiring country performers as Earl Thomas Conley we’d never know what a profound gift other performers such as Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Rodney Crowell are.

Spend an hour with those singers and you walk away knowing a bit more about this thing called life and about the way each of them chooses to tangle with it. They share their proudly divergent personalities, rough edges, 3 a.m. cigarette thoughts, doubts, successes and failings--things that ratify the kindred, though always unique, struggles that bind us as a species.

An hour spent with Conley on Monday at the Crazy Horse Steak House, though, was like having a stuffed-up nose, denying the pungency of life.

Some consideration is due the trim, bearded singer, as this is his first tour since having a polyp removed from his throat. Conley had to learn to sing again with the aid of a vocal coach.

But the obvious strain in his voice and sometimes awry notes weren’t the problem with his show. Rather, it was the near-total lack of conviction invested in the show’s songs; the songs themselves, which were scarcely worthy of much effort, and the absence of empathy, or even professional cohesion, between Conley and his quartet.

Though it’s not impossible to play heartfelt music on synthesizer drum pads and keyboards, it sure is easy not to, as the band demonstrated Monday, with those instruments abetted by overwrought electric bass lines and characterless, distorted lead guitar. One could walk into any lounge in this county and find players with a stronger group sound and better touch at lending personality to a song’s arrangement.

The show’s 16 songs ranged from his “Fire and Smoke” from 1981 to the current single “Shadow of a Doubt” by Robert Byrne and Tom Wopat, taken from the new “Yours Truly” album released this week. Other selections included “Too Hot to Handle” from his aptly titled “Treadin’ Water” album, “Angel in Disguise,” “Once in a Blue Moon,” “Don’t Make It Easy for Me,” “Somewhere Between Right and Wrong” and a brief encore version of “Can’t Win for Losing You.”

Conley struck a few sparks on the bitter ode “What I’d Say,” which were largely extinguished by the band’s synth-happy accompaniment. Otherwise, it hardly seemed to matter whether the song’s themes were happy or sad, as the lyrics seemed divorced from any real attempt at feeling, seeming rather to be words that wound up on a lyric sheet merely because they rhymed.

Though Conley wore an acoustic guitar throughout his show, he never actually played it, rarely even bothering to pretend to strum it. If he just needed a prop to hold, there might be better choices: He could hold a wiggling puppy to inject some motion to his performance. Or he could replace the guitar with a pump-action shotgun, which, if properly wielded, could sure keep his audiences on the alert.