POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Joe Diffie Shows His Many Faces : The singer, performing with Heartbreak Highway at the Crazy Horse, was like a chameleon that hasn’t found his own color.

Do any country music fans remember flaws ? You know, those little character ruts that make us distinct and human, the aching doubts or self-induced bouts of perilous living that can shape a singer’s voice?

While a grand shout better than the faceless Nashville pap that preceded country’s current revival, the New Traditionalists can seem just a mite too perfect. It’s as if they let the previous generation--George Jones, mostly--do the hard living for them, and they just synthesized the vocal results. Clint Black sings fine, but you don’t hear about him careening around the neighborhood on his power mower, looped out of his mind in the wee hours.

Of course, one should never operate heavy machinery while looped. And no one would wish the suicidal filament of country’s old lights on its new bulbs. But some of these young talents are so ideal it’s creepy.

In his first Crazy Horse Steak House appearance Monday, singer Joe Diffie’s voice proved a tremendous combination of Jones, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. His vocal range shades from a rich baritone to a supple tenor, and like Jones he has a knack for making unfettered monkey-in-the-branches leaps through his whole range. On ballads his voice takes on Haggard’s crusty character and weathered perspective. His up-tempo numbers have Owens’ drive and humor, sometimes laced with some of Jones’ “I’m a People” goofiness.

But, unlike those three, Diffie only rarely gave the impression he was sharing his soul with the audience. That’s not to suggest he’s a glib performer. The Oklahoman was nothing if not earnest, and he and his seven-piece band, Heartbreak Highway, evidently love their work. It’s just that his voice was so fabulously chameleonic that it gave the impression that the singer hasn’t yet found his own color.

That shortage of resonance wasn’t enough to keep the show from being a pure pleasure. The 20-song, 85-minute set kicked off with the locomotive-rhythmed “Next Thang Smokin’ ” from his new album, titled “Regular Joe” and due in January. He did six songs from the new disc and much from his 1990 debut “A Thousand Winding Roads.”

The whimsical “Liquid Heartache” allowed the audience to hear what an Owens drinking song might be like, if Owens ever did them. On Diffie’s excellent first No. 1 single, “New Way (to Light an Old Flame),” he also drew from Owens, with guitarist Lee Bogen adding a vocal harmony reminiscent of the Buckaroos’ Don Rich. Diffie took a decidedly Hag-ish vocal on the ballad “Homes” and the new song “Is It Cold in Here (Or Is It Just You?).”

The mustachioed singer and his band also took Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya”--a tune microwaved to lifelessness by half the touring country acts extant--and set it cooking to a boil. That was followed by an uproarious rendition of Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” with Diffie perfectly mimicking Lewis’ wild vocal. While not quite catching the grunge of ZZ Top’s “Tush,” Diffie did nail Haggard’s “Working Man Blues” and Owens’ “Together Again,” on the latter tune capturing the oddly mournful tone that Owens originally gave the happy lyric.

The set’s strongest song was “There Goes the Neighborhood,” both because it is a powerful, moving ballad about romantic disintegration, and because Diffie’s appropriately aching vocal seemed to be coming from his own mouth instead of issuing from the ghosts of country past.

Diffie ventured into the audience twice, singing ballads to his female fans and shaking nearly every hand in the place. He would have shook them all, but halfway through “Stranger in Your Eyes”--a haunting ballad of wishing for a fresh start at old love--he came across his wife in the audience, and finished the song while hugging her.