POP MUSIC REVIEW : Lighter Side of Michael Penn : Pop-Rock Songsmith, Not Known for Flamboyance, Plays It Loose and Fun With New Band

Nobody will ever mistake Michael Penn for Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

But, if not quite a gas, the mild-mannered, decidedly unflamboyant singer-songwriter did manage to generate some steam at peak moments of the show he put on with his new band Tuesday night at the Coach House. Penn, in his restrained way, appeared to be having fun.

Two summers ago, the Los Angeles-based singer ended his first national tour at the San Juan Capistrano club, coming off as a stiff, almost painfully reserved performer. But he got by on the strength of songs from his good debut album, “March.”

Penn’s second album, “Free for All,” is due out next week. This time he was starting his tour at the Coach House, with a band that included just one holdover from before: his longtime keyboard-playing sidekick, Patrick Warren.

The new album offers another batch of nicely wrought pop-rock songs that, if lyrically obscure, manage to get across feelings clearly--for the most part feelings of betrayal and disgust. Penn, looser at the start of this tour than he was at the end of the last one, managed to joke a little, grin a fair amount, and even rock out a bit, slashing away enthusiastically at his Rickenbacker down the home stretch.

His four-man band was very well-drilled, playing nearly note-for-note renditions of his songs’ recorded versions, and pulling off impressive maneuvers like the delicate fade-out on “By the Book.”

But the show’s most memorable passages were the ones in which Penn and company threw out the book and stretched out instrumentally. They did it in a folk-dance mode on “By the Book,” with Val McCallum, the lumberjack-sized lead guitarist, putting aside his ax to moan on harmonica. And they did it with fine rocking intensity late in the set-closing “Free Time,” a song rooted in a “Day Tripper”-like Beatles style, and repeated the trick with the final encore, “Brave New World.” That one melded two distinctive pop flavors, in driving verses a la Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and a lyrical, Beatlesque chorus.

Warren used the finale to show off the ghostly sonics of his Chamberlin synthesizer, an old-fashioned instrument that is a low-tech, similar-sounding cousin to that other ancient (well, ‘60s-vintage) keyboard artifact, the Mellotron. Warren’s modestly applied array of off-kilter hues provided a fresh-sounding alternative to the sound-alike digital-sampling that now dominates the world of rock keyboards. Steuart Liebig, was supple, punchy and active on six-string bass, while guitar soloist McCallum favored Hendrixian wah-wah wails, nicely reined in to fit the structure of what was, after all, not a guitar band, but a showcase for a pop-rock songsmith.

Penn, looking Dylanesque in scruffy beard and untamed hair, drew eight of the show’s 15 songs from his upcoming album. All were catchy and classically poppy or folksy enough to strike a chord of familiarity and register with an audience on first hearing (although lyrically many of them are sufficiently oblique to elude clear comprehension on fourth or fifth hearing, not to mention 44th or 45th).

Another new song, not included on the album, was a departure for Penn: a chunky, lyrically direct blues called “Rising Steam.” The words painted an uncharacteristically utopian vision--of a world so suffused with comfort and joy that it includes a magically accommodating stream, cool in summer, steamy hot in winter. But Penn tore those lyrics to shreds with biliously ironic intonations, and the band joined him in ransacking that soft-focus vision with a raw, lurching attack. A bit obvious perhaps, but alongside all the obscure, imagistic lines Penn was flinging about in other songs, it was reassuring to have one you could grasp.

Penn wasn’t a commanding singer, but his alternately reedy and grainy voice allowed him to get across the bitter edge required by some songs, or the plaintiveness in such graceful ballads as “Battle Room” and the folk-tinged “Coal.” He negotiated his melodies well, except when he ducked all the chorus high notes in “No Myth,” his breakthrough hit--which left poor McCallum hanging up there alone, “ooh-ooh”-ing a suddenly naked high-harmony. Penn was able to have a good grin over it.

One might wish, in an ideal world, for every rock singer to be a natural dynamo, a gifted performer brimming with allure and personality. But just as not every Penn can be a Sean (who happens to be Michael’s younger brother), not every rocker can be a Jagger or a Jerry Lee. The reserved, unassuming types deserve to have their platform, too, and Penn is enough of a craftsman and a conduit for emotions to make good use of his.

Compared to the openers, Downy Mildew, Penn was a dynamo. The Los Angeles band played jangling rock with so much deliberation and subdued restraint that a casual listening might make you think it was R.E.M. after too much Valium.

But, as the 40-minute set went on, it became apparent that Downy Mildew was weaving a seductive web of dreams and mysteries. It was, in fact, more like the Cure off of whatever it is that makes Robert Smith sound so hysterical and flighty, or 10,000 Maniacs freed from preciousness and pretentiousness.

On songs like a cover of the Dionne Warwick oldie, “Walk on By,” singer Jenny Homer didn’t settle for simple melancholy, but shaded her voice with a haunted, strange cast owing a good deal to Celtic and British folk music. Unlike other bands for which mood-weaving is synonymous with gloom-mongering, Downey Mildew was able to find the sweeter side of sorrow on the set-closing “An Oncoming Train” (the title song of the band’s current album), or strike a tone of quiet wonder in “Seconds Protest.” Once or twice, the band hooked into a Velvets-style surge of dissonance and feedback, providing a measure of contrast to the subtle, refined approach that dominated. Downey Mildew emphasized a single mood, but it was wise not to fall slave to it.