POP MUSIC REVIEW : Monster Sings of Loss, Defeat

Thelonious Monster faced problems both internal and aural at Bogart’s in Long Beach on Saturday. Singer Bob Forrest informed the packed house that he and guitarist Dix Denney “got in a scuffle” before the show and band members had a hard time hearing themselves clearly on stage, prompting Denney at one point to send a roll of duct tape whizzing past the sound man’s ear.

But that’s par for the course for this band, and it kept its cohesiveness Saturday, even as Forrest cut a somewhat wobbly, uncertain figure, clinging to beer bottle and cigarettes as if they were security blankets. With his stringy, wizened, cracking voice registering more weariness than usual, Forrest sang of emotional exhaustion, defeat and loss, anger and damnation. Missing, though, was the tempered, hard-won sense of affirmation that occasionally brightens Thelonious’ repertoire and marks its recent “Beautiful Mess” album.

The Darling Buds’ Andrea Lewis does sing about rough times too, but not nearly as believably as Forrest. In contrast to the Monster, the Welsh band’s second-billed set Saturday offered sharp, glitch-free, note-perfect renditions of catchy, appealing songs about Lewis’ romantic ups and downs. But not one of them summoned the conviction, feeling, risk and spontaneity that permeated the headliner’s set.

The Buds did offer an alluring surface, with Lewis’ airy, but not-insubstantial voice riding waves of Mary Chain-inspired noise-pop guitar. “If I had a reason, then I’d kill for love,” she sang in “Long Day in the Universe,” a song drawn from the new album, “Erotica” (take that, Madonna). It was hard to believe, based on this smooth, slightly detached performance, that she’d ever really go to such extremes. The Darling Buds headline tonight at the Roxy.