O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Crazy Horse Suffers Restless Heart Attack : One of the blandest, most faceless groups on the country scene manages to have less personality than usual.

If you were to devise a hell for country-music critics, you might concoct an inferno where we would be forced to listen to lackluster session musicians play endless cover versions of Restless Heart hits. Except for the flames (the least terrifying part), that nightmare almost came true Monday night at the Crazy Horse.

Lead singer Larry Stewart has left Restless Heart to pursue a solo career. In their 65-minute set, the four remaining musicians took turns singing the group’s hits.

Even when Stewart was in the band, Restless Heart was one of the blandest, most faceless groups in country music; indeed, hardly anybody in the Crazy Horse audience seemed to notice his absence.

The band was formed in 1985 when songwriter Tim DuBois gathered some of his session musician pals together into a group he hoped would be an outlet for his songs. With DuBois behind the scenes as producer, the band achieved considerable success recycling the kind of watered-down ‘70s rock that had vaulted Alabama to country stardom. In fact, Restless Heart once joked that all the songs on its debut album were ones that Alabama had rejected.

On Monday, Restless Heart managed to achieve the almost inconceivable feat of playing the intimate Crazy Horse without showing even a hint of personality. The Crazy Horse brings the performer and the audience so close together that even legends inevitably let their hair down. Bobby Bare gets rowdy. Waylon Jennings gets chatty. Charlie Daniels gets obnoxious. Restless Heart, however, just got more faceless.

What little character Restless Heart has exhibited as a band can largely be attributed to Stewart’s grainy vocals on such hits as “Fast Moving Train” and “I’ll Still Be Loving You.” Restless Heart played one hit after another, distributing the lead vocals among the four musicians the way a bar band that cranks out five sets a night gives every player a chance to sing. Bassist Paul Gregg and keyboardist Dave Innis provided nominal leadership, by virtue of doing most of the talking and by taking more lead vocals than guitarist Greg Jennings and drummer John Dittrich. Conversation, however, was limited to platitudes such as “We’re Restless Heart. We had a wonderful time.” It’s nice to hear that somebody did.

Without Stewart’s singing, Restless Heart’s hits sounded like cover versions. The best moments in Restless Heart’s 15-song set came when the musicians focused on playing rather than singing.

The band started to generate some excitement mid-set on a lively version of Jennings and DuBois’ “Hummingbird,” a rousing train song that appeared on Restless Heart’s sophomore album and later became a hit for master picker Ricky Skaggs. The number was sparked Monday by steaming solos from Jennings and Innis. Restless Heart also took an original turn when it encored with an instrumental version of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Women.”

For most of the set, though, Restless Heart was as uninventive musically as it was vocally. Jennings largely borrowed his licks from the textbook of ‘70s-rock cliches. Innis puffed up most of the songs with bloated synthesizer histrionics while Dittrich bludgeoned every song into submission on a huge drum kit that had so many cymbals it looked like a Chinese pagoda.

The most telling moment was when Innis announced that Restless Heart was going to do “something real country for you.” You might think he meant that the band was going to try a Hank Williams standard or a Lefty Frizzell classic. Instead, Restless Heart launched into its latest hit, “Familiar Pain,” a power ballad that would hardly be out of place on a Bryan Adams album.