Adam Ant Looks Good Enough for Romance : He does four new songs, but the old material is just barely dusted off for a ‘Persuasion’ tour stop at the Coach House.

Adam Ant doesn’t seem to have spent his three-year hiatus from rock ‘n’ roll deep in thought about how to reinterpret the old or explore the new, but at least he’s kept his looks.

Maybe staying svelte and handsome is enough to justify continuing a career in today’s music business. After all, if the video-ready packaging is there, a reasonably clever fellow should be able to find something to stuff it with.

Ant (whose real name is Stuart Goddard) was adept at packaging and selling back in his early ‘80s heyday as a leader of the British “New Romantic” movement.

To make his mark, he appeared as a painted savage or in pirate garb, playing the role of a randy dandy who sailed the naughty seas of sexual indulgence. He also liked to pretend he was the convention-defying creator of something called “Antmusic,” although it’s unclear, in retrospect, just what conventions his highly commercial mixture of vaudeville and new-wave rock was defying.

Ant wore no war paint or buccaneer duds Tuesday night at the Coach House, but he did look marvelous in basic black.

The New Romantic movement may be a dim memory, but the 38-year-old singer still tried to come off as a little Lord Byron, striking poses and fixing the full house with long, intense stares when not turning pirouettes or waving his arms in what appeared to be a never-ending, one-sided game of Simon Says. His act quickly grew repetitious and predictable.

Ant’s voice, thin and prone toward yelping even at its best, lost its punch during the second half of this 90-minute performance, although that didn’t stop his fans from receiving him warmly. (Only after the strident pirate anthem, “Stand and Deliver,” were many moved to stand while delivering their applause).

This was the second concert in a 14-show Western jaunt named the “Persuasion” tour, after the title of Ant’s album-in-progress. He was scheduled to play the Coach House again tonight and Friday, with tonight’s show sold out.

The 20-song set included four new numbers. The best of them was the most purely romantic: a wistful ballad, “Wonderful,” in which Ant sounded sincere in the role of an apologetic lover who repents past mistakes and professes the fullness of his feelings.

The other new songs--”Obsession,” “Persuasion” and “Headgear”--offered a vague mixture of pop and big-beat dance music, not far afield from the style of Ant’s previous album, the 1990 “Manners & Physique.”

Ant’s morsels from the past included some catchy tunes; there’s no denying that the singer and his longtime songwriting sidekick, guitarist Marco Pirroni, have a certain pop savvy.

But Ant was content to serve up the old (including “Vive Le Rock,” “Car Trouble,” “Antmusic” and “Goody Two Shoes”) without reinterpreting his past stance as a carefree, if cynical Don Juan.

As he announced at the start, and repeated several times, his aim was to “get extremely hot and sweaty.”

Toward that modest goal, Ant received variable support from his five-member band. Boz Borrer, late of Morrissey’s band, was a dynamo who could have overshadowed the star if he’d given himself a free reign. One highlight, “Room at the Top,” found a hyperkinetic Borrer hopping and high-kicking merrily across the stage while dashing off some nice, roughhouse guitar licks.

Pirroni was no dynamo: looking like a pudgy, balding cross between Benito Mussolini and ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman, he seemed only intermittently engaged in the proceedings. The two guitarists had some good tandem moments, notably “Obsession,” when Pirroni’s jagged bursts were set against Borrer’s clear, liquid riffs. But, early in the tour, the band lacked consistent sharpness and spark.

If you think back on the history of Britain’s Old Romantics--Byron and Shelley and Keats--most of them flamed out instead of sticking around to rust.

We wouldn’t wish anything like their premature exits on Adam Ant: May he live long and prosper and never lose his good looks. But, if Tuesday night’s performance is the best he can muster, we don’t really need another chapter of his New Romance.

Bazooka’s all-instrumental melding of be-bop with heavy rock and its jazz-traditionalist look--three guys in jackets and ties--would seem a stretch for Adam Ant fans. But the local trio managed to go over well, notwithstanding the contingent that cheered loudest when saxophonist Tony Atherton announced the last song.

The sheer appeal of impressive musicianship must have put Bazooka across, because the band, whose debut album will be released by SST Records on March 16, didn’t try to gear its set to new wave tastes. The album, “Perfectly Square,” includes covers of Cream’s rendition of “Crossroads” and Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”--ingredients that could have been incorporated into a rock-slanted set.

Instead, Bazooka devoted most of its 35 minutes to playfully ruminative music that ambled unhurriedly rather than pushing for effect.

The opening, “Get Gettin’ Down Down,” and the closer, “Reptilicus Promiscuous,” did speed up the rhythms and offer backdrops for some unfettered solo blowing by Atherton. Even at the prevailing moderate tempos, Vince Meghrouni’s excellent, turn-on-a-dime drumming and Bill Crawford’s nimble bass generated plenty of interesting motion, while the saxophone supplied cool, wry commentary.