POP MUSIC REVIEW : Sweet, Surprising James

First, he dropped to one knee in an impersonation of Elvis bending to drink from a cup of water. Then, he strutted a few paces before launching into a 360-degree jump with a pinpoint landing. He even managed a few Chuck Berry-like squats with guitar in hand.

James Taylor may be 44 years old, but he proved at the Pacific Amphitheatre on Wednesday that he’s still full of surprises.

The biggest surprise might be that Taylor--who is linked indelibly to the soft-rock singer-songwriter movement of the ‘70s--still can fill an arena at all. (In addition to the Pacific show and earlier stops in Santa Barbara and San Diego, Taylor opens a five-show run on Tuesday at the Universal Amphitheatre.)

His shows certainly aren’t flashy (unless you consider a little lighting and dry ice high-tech), his fan base is largely middle-aged, and the man . . . well, he wears khakis and work boots in concert.

Still, he not only packs them in year after year, he managed to hold on to most of his audience until the very last notes of Wednesday’s two-hour-plus concert. Considering that the standard rap against Taylor long has been that his songs sound hypnotically similar, the crowd’s pleas for more, after three encores, must have been music to his ears.

(Taylor is aware of that criticism: Introducing “The Frozen Man” from his latest album, “New Moon Shine,” he remarked dryly, “Here’s another new song. It sounds just like all the old songs but, technically, it’s a new song.”) In two sets, with intermission, such classic Taylor hits as “Sweet Baby James,” “Carolina in My Mind” and “Fire and Rain” were served up alongside selections from “New Moon Shine” and a wide range of other material.

Except for a brief sequence at the outset, Taylor managed to shake up the sameness of his more patented ballads and soft rockers by interspersing them with gospel-tinged numbers (“Shed a Little Light”), Cajun and calypso flavorings (“(I’ve Got to) Stop Thinkin’ ‘Bout That,” Sam Cooke’s “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha”), rockabilly (“Slap Leather”) and blues (“Steamroller”).

There were exquisite, lilting harmonies from his four backup singers during “That’s Why I’m Here” and numerous others. And the five-member band, though relegated to near-Muzak on some of Taylor’s more obvious radio-ready hits, got to show its chops with the chunky, percussive “First of May” and the crystalline “The Frozen Man.”

A warm and personable performer, Taylor also displayed wit and a penchant for social-political satire. In “Slap Leather,” he sang “Get all worked up so we can go to war / We find something worth killing for / Tie a yellow ribbon around your eyes / Big McFalafel and a side of fries.” Taylor’s tour is in support of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which he called “a sort of law firm for the environment.” Juxtapose that sort of thing with songs like “Handy Man” and “How Sweet It Is,” as Taylor did effortlessly and convincingly, and this hardly seems a one-dimensional kind of guy.