O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Too Much Eek-A-Mouse Invades the Coach House

Eek-A-Mouse isn’t so much a singer as a living comic book dialogue balloon filled with sound effects.

Instead of the Wompf!!! Kerpoww!!! Blamm!!! Ungghh! and Aaarghh! that color your typical DC or Marvel action scene, this very tall reggae Mouse (real name Ripton Hylton) created a peaceable aural kingdom filled with curiosities during his show Friday night at the Coach House.

Among Eek-A-Mouse’s favorite vocal contortions were a rapid-fire bing-bom-biddly-bing-bom trilled at length, a falsetto ai-yi-yi that sounded like a cross between a muted trumpet and a meowing alley cat, guttural croaking that would have done Wolfman Jack proud, and even some deep-baritone la-la-la- ing that made it sound as if a stout German woodsman had unknowingly wandered off an opera stage and into a reggae show.

While most of these effects were repeated with regularity, the staple of the Jamaican singer’s style was an incantatory, ethereal, robotic-sounding singsong whose refracted tones seemed to be bubbling up from under water. Think of Hal, the computer from “2001,” trying to sing “Daisy” while drifting off into oblivion.

While all of this certainly made Eek-A-Mouse “U-Neek” (the title of his latest album), he was an oddity better sampled in small portions. The Coach House show was a nearly two-hour festival of incantations, high-pitched yi-yi’s (a particular crowd favorite) and bing-bong-biddlys.

It did fulfill one of the basic functions of reggae, which is to set the audience bobbing happily in a slow, dancing trance. Mouse’s four-man band, a stripped-down outfit of bass, drums, guitar and synthesizer, delivered a controlled, portent-filled surge. The band’s taut, inexorable gait was full of gravity, and it lent needed musical solidity to a show founded on such a gimmicky vocal style. The playing remained sparse and economical, except on a reggaefied cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Dyer Maker,” when murkiness set in as the band tried too hard for heaviness.

After a while, the slow trance-rhythms became tiresome. There were a few welcome breaks: “Gangster Chronicles” brought some quick-paced, enlivening funk into play. Even with the beat revved up, Eek-A-Mouse roved the stage in his characteristic loping, slow-motion gait, arms swinging to emphasize his lankiness. The 6-foot-6 singer, who according to legend took his name from a racehorse that never rewarded his backers, was an intense but hardly remote presence, willing to hunker down at stage-side for some close interaction with the dancing fans.

Content ranged from an opening prophetic homily about the advisability of building on solid ground rather than sand, to sagas about Eek-A-Mouse being unjustly accused of dealing drugs and being hounded out of the country by immigration officials. The set-closing “Rude Boys A Foreign” hit with the most intensity with its cautionary verses about Jamaican toughs trying to make it big in the drug trade, only to meet unhappy ends. But even that song, the most focused of the show, suffered from excessive repetition--the essential problem of a performance built on a few amusing notions rather than an embracing musicality.

Mo Dn Irie offered a sharp opening set of pop-tinged reggae. Dapper lead singer Terry Charlebois’s light and airy tenor was suited to such dreamy romantic confections as “I Want to Be With You.” But his voice wasn’t up to the demands of the 50-minute set’s two covers, Bob Marley’s “Exodus” and “My Girl,” the Temptations chestnut.

Guitarist Kurt Mahoney, formerly with Eyes of the World, brought some edge to the proceedings when he took over the vocals on “When the Sun Sets,” a darker-hued song that delved into the bitterness of a romantic breakup. Mo Dn Irie wasn’t distinctive, but it was a well-versed, lively ensemble.