POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Material Hardly the Issue for Chicago Trio at Coach House

In one of the basketful of zesty tunes it brought to the Coach House Saturday night, the Chicago trio Material Issue exuberantly proclaimed that the time has arrived for an “International Pop Overthrow”--the band’s phrase for a musical uprising on behalf of the punchy, stripped-down melodic, pure-pop style it favors.

But the too-gaudy stage lighting employed by Material Issue and the second-billed Mighty Lemon Drops during an alternative-rock trifecta that also included Too Much Joy signaled that even bands on the club level are having their purity overthrown by MTV values.

The Mighty Lemon Drops have all the personality of a glycerin suppository, so it was something of a welcome diversion to see the British band eclipsed or obscured by stage fog and the oh-so-pretty cones of flashing, swirling, rotating multicolored light that augmented the club’s own lighting system, giving the proceedings the feeling of perpetual, jump-cut visual motion that defines rock video.

But with a band like Material Issue, one would gladly sacrifice the lighting display for a plain old spotlight revealing the musicians’ faces as they react to the pleasures of pure-pop, or the feelings that register while they sing about that fundamental pure-pop song subject, romance. Material Issue’s singer-guitarist-songwriter, Jim Ellison, didn’t need fancy lighting to carry a show. He moved with a lanky dynamism, slinging guitar licks from coolly kinetic postures.

Fortunately, out of the fog and dazzling light came consistently tasty Material Issue originals that carried on a highly melodic, nicely harmonized, but emphatically rocking tradition that goes back to the early Beatles and Who and proceeds forward in time through such practitioners as the Move, Badfinger, Todd Rundgren, Raspberries, Marshall Crenshaw and the La’s. Given the preponderance of British influences in that list, it’s not surprising that Ellison often favors an anglicized accent that he clearly didn’t pick up listening to Mike Ditka’s post-game press conferences.

Material Issue divided its program about equally between songs from its fine debut album, “International Pop Overthrow,” and the OK but less involving new album, “Destination Universe.” Most of it was power-pop showcasing Ellison’s gritty but fluent guitar work and drummer Mike Zelenko’s emphatic pounding (which actually boomed too high in the mix, intruding somewhat on the lead vocals).

Material Issue tossed in enough ballads to pace the show well, and its material was varied enough to allow for a progression of moods--from the effervescent (“International Pop Overthrow”) to the valedictory (“Li’l Christine”), the wistful (“Very First Lie”) to the cynical (“What Girls Want”) and on to the nerve-frazzled (“Valerie Loves Me”). Ellison’s voice is on the thin-and-nasal side; but good harmony has a multiplier effect in pure-pop, and bassist Ted Ansani’s rich high-harmony backup singing paid big dividends.

“Very First Lie” was a high point, with its plaintive ballad passages offset by cascading guitar work that called to mind George Harrison’s chiming, quick-stepping fretwork on “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Like “Valerie Loves Me” and several other songs from the band’s debut album, “Very First Lie” has a double-edged resonance, painting an idyllic vision of love, only to have the unsettling possibility of deceit suddenly creep in during the song’s refrain. The “Destination Universe” songs tend to lack that extra dimension. “Everything,” the ballad that will be the next single from the new album, offered a string of stock sentiments and moon-June type rhymes, culminating in a treacly chorus (“I would give everything to be your everything”) that Ellison couldn’t deliver without breaking into a sheepish grin. It was a catchy enough ditty, though, in a syrupy sort of Bread-and-Badfinger way.

Ellison wasn’t too sweet on the audience, addressing it only to grouse over the fact that the sparse gathering of 200 or so people was sitting and listening rather than standing and shouting.

“I think we might be mistakenly in front of (a) Dan Fogelberg audience,” he mused at one point. But Ellison didn’t let that detract from his performance, and the audience, as Coach House crowds are wont to do in a room built for listening, not dancing, received the show enthusiastically even if it didn’t rush the stage.

In the great candy jar of rock, the Mighty Lemon Drops rattle around somewhere in the middle, eclipsed by far tastier bonbons near the top. The band plays with precision and draws on decent sources, with special attention to the Doors in mostly stormy, textured songs that are melodic enough to at least hold interest. But there’s an utter lack of adventure and imagination in the lyrics, and too little conviction in Paul Marsh’s thin singing. Call them accomplished yeomen who take few risks, avoiding pratfalls but accomplishing little.

Take away the pratfalls from Too Much Joy’s opening set, and you wouldn’t have much else to consider. On record, this band from the New York City suburbs applies good pop instincts to songs that alternate (sometimes within one stanza) between self-consciously clever college-rocker insider humor, and a sense of honest struggle to make sense of an alienating world. In that context, the smirking, ironic stuff comes off as a legitimate defense mechanism against the bewilderment of post-adolescence.

On stage, Too Much Joy went overboard with frat-house antics. Lead singer Tim Quirk lived up to his name, entering and exiting in military khaki garb, spraying the house with a water gun, and brandishing assorted other dumb props. As for guitarist Jay Blumenfield, when he wasn’t jumping around as if riding some invisible skateboard hurdle course, he tried body-surfing across one of the Coach House’s long dinner tables, using his instrument as a surfboard.

Amid all the extracurricular antics, the band failed even remotely to capture the crispness of its studio playing and harmonizing. As the Bonzo Dog Band and Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians have demonstrated, it’s possible for a band to be hilariously odd while playing with great aplomb. To live up to its name in concert, Too Much Joy is going to have to stop trying to brazen it out with so few chops.