POP MUSIC REVIEW : The Sundays Chase Gloom Away, Rock Steady

For a shy, melancholy band suffering from a bad case of the second-album shakes, the Sundays came off surprisingly sturdy, steady and hale Saturday night at UC Irvine’s Crawford Hall.

The young British foursome’s collective personality is far too low-key for it ever to be a kinetic live act. But, despite the limitations of its temperament and its spotty new material, the Sundays managed to sustain interest for most of its 70-minute set.

Though the band members’ bodies remained more or less immobile (leaving it to an elaborate light show to divert the eye), the Sundays threw some musical heft around that one wouldn’t suspect was there just from hearing the albums.

The band made a splendid debut in 1990 with the album, “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic” and its winning single, “Here’s Where the Story Ends.” Singer Harriet Wheeler and guitarist David Gavurin, a couple and songwriting team, came out with the best sort of coming-of-age album: tinged with dejection and disillusionment, yet keeping an enlivening spunk and a witty, endearing sense of self-irony.

On the follow-up effort, “Blind,” the Sundays fell into one-dimensional lamentation, and misplaced much of the sharp pop-craft that made “Reading, Writing” a consistent treat. Exit the spunk and the witty irony; enter conventional gloom and ill-focused melodies (with a few exceptions).

In concert, the Sundays divided their set about evenly between the two albums. They deployed the handful of stronger “Blind” songs (notably “Blood on My Hands,” but omitted the album’s lovely cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses”). They skirted most of the drearier ones (though “On Earth” and “Medicine” made for a dull pairing early in the set), and put an extra charge into the playing to help a few others.

Wheeler lived up to her studio performances. She is a marvelous singer whose ethereal textures are tempered by a light vibrato that offsets the wispy quality and introduces a hothouse humidity. The best pop voices are always two-dimensional, and Wheeler adds a third and fourth with her ability to leap to a fragile but controlled high-range, or infuse her phrasing with a sharp, insistent bite. All she needs is good stuff to sing.

She was in fine form Saturday night, although anyone interested in the lyrical sense of her songs needed to have them memorized: given her decidedly casual relationship with consonants, and Crawford Hall’s echoing-gym acoustics, you could catch Wheeler’s tone and timbre, but not many of her words. Between songs, the demure singer was the epitome of the pleasantly polite but reserved British subject, full of amiable thanks for a warm reception, but saying little else.

Her bandmates, Gavurin, bassist Paul Brindley and drummer Patrick Hannan, duplicated the light rippling texture of such delicate album tracks as the aforementioned “Here’s Where the Story Ends,” but they also showed consistent muscle--especially on the barreling, almost garrulous “Hideous Towns,” and “A Certain Someone,” which introduced a tough funk groove and rode it to higher and higher intensity. Wheeler turned up the voltage and kept up with her bandmates, contributing some of her edgiest singing.

Surprisingly, the Sundays also essayed an uncharacteristic bit of basic, bash-it-out garage rock during the second of two encores. The players managed the rougher-hewn style well, but Wheeler sounded airy and pure in a setting that called for getting down with a roar and a growl. There’s one dimension she lacks.

Garage rock lovers were well taken care of, however, thanks to the opening act, Madder Rose. The New York City band has issued a striking debut album, “Bring It Down,” positioning itself as an heir to the storied Manhattan underground guitar-band legacy that runs from the Velvet Underground through Television, the Patti Smith Group and on to Sonic Youth. Lead singer Mary Lorson slashed at her guitar to join Billy Cote in churning up a thick din that also brought Neil Young into the picture on the heavy dirge “Lights Go Down.”

Lorson’s voice, a combination of light and throaty textures, fell somewhere near Kim Deal of the Pixies, and she got good harmony support from bassist Matt Verla-Ray.

“Baby Gets High” was a sad ballad that had the hint of doo-wop that Lou Reed liked to introduce into the Velvets’ quieter stuff, while “20 Foot Red” burned about 212 degrees red hot. “Sway,” an overlooked Stones nugget from the “Sticky Fingers” album, was a fine cover choice, but Cote fell into his tendency to overindulge with wah-wah effects. Where the Sundays benefited from giving their album material an extra jolt on stage, Madder Rose might be better off pulling back on the noise a little and going for a more nuanced approach that places primary emphasis on the songs, not the surrounding colors.

Check out the album, salute the Sundays’ good taste in opening bands, and hope they come back and play some club gigs where they can give a fuller and clearer accounting.