POP REVIEW : El Tri’s Lora Skips Frenzy, Not Comment

Rather than incite his audience into a frenzy as usual, El Tri’s leader Alejandro Lora set a placid tone at the legendary Mexican rock band’s performance Sunday at the Hollywood Palladium.

His request that the house lights be turned on at the beginning of the show might have served his stated need to see the faces of his audience, but it also tended to discourage the kind of altercations between security forces and concert-goers that marred El Tri’s Palladium show last year.

This was a different Lora--optimistic, humorous, preferring to play his most commercial hits, such as “Viejas de Vecindad” (“Ladies From the Neighborhood”), “Es Dificil” (“It’s Hard”) and “Triste Cancion” (“Sad Song”).

Even so, there were some segments in which Lora, true to form, made references to political issues in his inimitable and witty manner.

Among the targets: the proposed free-trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States and those responsible for the explosions last month in Guadalajara. He dedicated “San Juanico”--his song about the 1984 gas explosions that rocked Mexico City--to the Guadalajara victims.

Playing to a primarily young, working-class audience that is addressed directly and often eloquently in El Tri’s songs, the band mounted a guitar-led attack that retained its old power but added a new polish in place of its former rawness.