POP REVIEW : An Engaging Joe Diffie Hits Home

Joe Diffie’s first album yielded four No. 1 country singles, and his new one might well have more. At the Roxy on Tuesday, though, the vocally gifted Oklahoman showed that he hasn’t yet forged an individual style, and his vision was limited to Strait neo-traditionalism blended with a more contemporary Nashville strain.

Still, it was an often engaging show, thanks to a voice that goes all the way from subterranean to a high plateau within hailing distance of Vince Gill’s timberline elevation. Diffie glided through that range without laboring, and usually with sensitivity to the lyric: The closing word home in “Almost Home”--about a man watching his father approach death--could have been an occasion for histrionics, but Diffie hit it short, simple and true.

In performing “Almost Home,” Diffie chose the better of his two dad tributes, typical of a set that pretty much filtered out his more cliched songs. There was lively honky-tonk, tender ballads, big-issue philosophizing (“Ships That Don’t Come In”), interpretations of Haggard and Owens, and a version of George Jones and Tammy Wynette’s “Golden Ring” with Wynette guesting.

But songs and singing will be Diffie’s chief currency until he loosens up on stage. There was no problem with his singing, or the playing of his six-piece band (not quite the touch and purity of George Strait’s crack crew, but in the ball park, and they can rock too), but Diffie was pretty flat as a performer.

He might sense this, because he made a handshaking stroll through the audience. But it seemed like a forced effort. Nobody’s asking him to be Garth Brooks, nor to relinquish his concentration and unpretentiousness, but he needs to put some relaxation and urgency into his stage personality, and let us see him being moved by his often moving music.