Pop Reviews : Coping With Weather Amid Exploding Chaos

“You like the rain?” asked Julian Cope in his show on Monday at the Roxy. “We did it just to freak you out.”

Uh-oooh! Cope is the kind of guy who just might believe that he can control the elements. Whether it’s real or an act, the Liverpool native, who formerly fronted the neo-psychedelic post-punk band Teardrop Explodes, has always come off as a post-Syd Barrett space-case--albeit one who writes great songs.

Take his latest album, “Peggy Suicide,” which provided the bulk of Monday’s material: It’s something of a concept piece centered on a dream about a polluted Mother Earth-goddess. It’s the kind of self-indulgent, mystical flight we used to get in the ‘70s from English semi-legends Roy Harper and Gong founder Daevid Allen. Yet it rocks and it coheres.

Same for Monday’s show, the first of Cope’s two nights at the Roxy. Weather notwithstanding, the element Cope was most in control of was the dynamic rock generated by his basic three-piece band. For the first half of the 90-minute set, Cope and crew alternated between hooky pop tunes and harsh ravers before kicking into a second half of exhilarating, Iggy Pop-ish controlled chaos.

In manner, Cope was a charming, gentle loony--as opposed to the arrogant, surly loony of his last Los Angeles appearance. But he left no doubt that he’s loony, especially when he suddenly did a freak-out dance, darting back and forth across the stage. The image was further enhanced by his attire: just swim trunks, with his hair in a modified Pebbles Flintstone/Madonna topknot.