POP MUSIC REVIEW : Lacy J. Dalton Goes Beyond Country Borders : At the Crazy Horse, the singer changes styles and moods quickly and with abandon, bouncing from honky-tonk to rock to easy-listening pop.

If the government is really serious about finding a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, it should figure out how to harness the energy that Lacy J. Dalton exudes in concert.

In her 75-minute early show at the Crazy Horse Steak House on Monday, Dalton bounded through her set like a supercharged dynamo who could barely be contained by the physical boundaries of the stage. Constantly in motion, she literally stretched beyond its limits throughout her show. She would lean out over the edge on songs such as “Don’t Try to Tell Me (Nothin’s Goin’ On)” until she was practically in the laps of those in the front row. On the blues number “Lightnin’ Strikes a Good Man,” she moved off the stage onto the floor to sing a few lines nose to nose with selected folks in the audience.

Although it was highly entertaining, Dalton’s performance was more akin to a dazzling lightning storm than a display of controlled electricity. She bounced from mood to mood and style to style so frequently that it was hard to get a fix on who she really was.

One moment she was a down-and-out honky-tonk angel draping herself jokingly over keyboardist Gene Barnholt as they camped it up during the humorous hard-country song “Wild Turkey.” The next she turned into a rock and roller as she and her five-piece band, the Dalton Gang, pounded out a heavy-handed version of Roy Orbison’s “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream).” On the next song she shifted into yet another persona for the easy-listening pop of her biggest hit, “Takin’ It Easy.” The result was confusing--sort of like being served sushi, pizza and mashed potatoes all in the same dinner.

Which is the real Lacy J. Dalton? That’s anybody’s guess.

When Dalton first hit the country scene in 1980 with her eponymous all-country debut album, she was hailed as the female counterpart of country outlaws Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Dalton strained against the constraints of the country label, though, and by her third album she was delving into other musical genres. On her 1986 album, “Highway Diner,” she even came close to mainstream rock.

Throughout her 17-song set Monday, Dalton mixed songs from all stages of her 13-year career. She intertwined such early hard country hits as “Hard Times,” “16th Avenue” and “Crazy Blue Eyes” with more recent pop- and rock-oriented songs such as her bluesy hit “Black Coffee” and the hard-rocking “Gone Again” from “Diner.”

And instead of saving her most enduring country hits--”16th Avenue” and “Black Coffee”--for the climax of her show, Dalton chose to end with three nearly hard-rock songs--”Love Is a Real Outlaw,” “Gone Again” and “Dixie Devil.”

As her show thudded to a close, one began to suspect that Dalton and her band may really be closet rockers in their hearts of hearts. Certainly she and her Dalton Gang seemed eager to crank up the drums and electric instruments at the slightest provocation.

The Dalton Gang had a disquieting tendency to undermine even some of the mellow tunes by playing them as if they were Guns N’ Roses outtakes. The worst culprits were lead guitarist Rex Stemm, whose guitar whined rather than twanged, and drummer Jim Norris, who seemed to delight in bashing a song into smithereens.

No one would argue that Dalton could be a credible rock singer if she weren’t already such a fine country singer. But on numbers such as “16th Avenue,” when the Dalton Gang curbed its rock instincts and backed her with taste and restraint, she was as potent a performer as anyone in country.