POP MUSIC REVIEW : Diamond Is Not the Rio Thing

Diamond Rio looks to be a fabulous country band on paper--no great surprise if that paper happens to be a record label’s press release. The group, whose debut “Diamond Rio” album has spawned two hits, is touted as the new country band of the ‘90s, with world-class musicians melding bluegrass, jazz, rock and other styles, making a “tightly knit excursion into country’s leading edge.” (Planter’s Mixed Metaphors, anyone?)

But, as the group maintains in one of its songs, the proof is in the picking. At the Cowboy Boogie Co. (formerly Bandstand, formerly the Cowboy, formerly the Warehouse) on Sunday evening, Diamond Rio indeed did display some hot pickers: guitarist/banjoist Jimmy Olander and fiddler/mandolinist Gene Johnson. The group made persistent attempts at three-part bluegrass harmonies and delivered some jazz abstractions in Dan Truman’s inventive keyboard work.

But, though you can have all the elements necessary to make a diamond, sometimes you’re left only with coal. Diamond Rio proved to be a capable, entertaining outfit, but there was little in its musical makeup that one could call remotely new, and the band’s varied resources never combined to speak with a distinctive voice or convey much emotional depth.

The chief impediments were the group’s material--largely faceless, cliched songs from Nashville’s tune factory--and lead singer Marty Roe. It’s possible that Roe has had a twang since he was a toddler, but when he sang live, his incessant “countrifying” of every phrase seemed affected and one-dimensional.

Plus, it was hard to pick out the culprit, but someone in the three-part harmony department--either Roe, Johnson or bassist Dana Williams--often was so out of tune that the bluegrass vocals took on an almost Bulgarian dissonance. Combined with a sound mix that painfully stressed the upper mid-range, the harmonies were almost a debit rather than an asset.

The 65-minute set drew chiefly from the “Diamond Rio” album, fleshed out by a bluegrass medley, a revved-up gospel encore and new songs “Happy Ever After (One Day at a Time)” and “You Can’t Do Wrong and Get By.” That last one is the epitome of country music. And the audience didn’t even have to realize that for itself, since Roe told us that’s what it was.

This isn’t a band given to false modesty, or even to letting the listener decide the merits of a song. It gave little assists throughout the show, with Roe pronouncing the plodding, formulaic “They Don’t Make Hearts (Like They Used To)” to be “a beautiful ballad,” and Williams ordering “here’s a song that will make you feel good” before playing “The Ballad of Conley and Billy.”

The packed audience seemed to be feeling pretty good already, dancing to recorded music and eating messy barbecue long before the band came on. Diamond Rio did get a warm reception, particularly with its current hit “Mirror Mirror” and its No. 1 success “Meet in the Middle.”

That song’s catchy chorus, and some other moments, showed the band in a favorable light. For all its hackneyed conventions about the country boy caught up in the fast city life, “Mama Don’t Forget to Pray for Me” remained a persuasive ballad, and Sunday it was the closest Roe came to a heart-touching vocal.

The band’s picking talents came to the fore during the bluegrass medley, with Olander flying on banjo and Johnson burning up the fingerboards on both mandolin and fiddle.

Still, Diamond Rio lags far behind many other country acts who are forging an emotional, human bond between tradition and innovation, such as the Desert Rose Band and Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers, who set a sterling example with their recent Coach House performance.