POP MUSIC REVIEW : Mopefully Yours . . . : Despite Sulking by Front Man Miles Hunt, the Wonder Stuff’s Coach House Show Moves Forward on Solid Musical Footing

Question: What would you get if you produced 500 clones of Shakespeare’s Cassius, gave them all a bad case of the piles, and plunked them down in a nightclub?

Answer: An audience that Miles Hunt, the snit-prone young Englishman who fronts the Wonder Stuff, might have found more to his liking than the large, adoring crowd he faced Sunday night at the Coach House.

The hemorrhoidal Cassius clones would all be lean and hungry, and they would not be inclined to sit. Which would have spared Hunt the horrible bummer of having to play to an audience that had the option of availing itself of chairs and menus.

Confronted with some 500 sitting fans, a percentage of whom were at the moment either eating or digesting, Hunt cussed his way through the Wonder Stuff’s stormy opening number, “Change Every Light Bulb.” Then he announced that he was bored and threatened to remain so unless this assembly of “ignorant bastards” got up on the double.

A less-compliant crowd might have taken that as a cue to coat the Wonder Stuff in the gooey stuff that goes on hamburgers, nachos and potato skins. But instead of giving new meaning to the brand name “Hunt’s Ketchup,” the fans simply let the cantankerous singer have his way.

So much for the ideal of playing music to earn a standing response (something that is admittedly pretty rare at the Coach House, where I have seen many an audience stay seated through an entire show and, judging by the lusty applause, thoroughly enjoy it. As former Pixies front man Frank Black approvingly said last year from the Coach House stage, sitting down can be a “more civilized” way to hear music than turning a concert into an aerobics class).

Far from rewarding the now-standing masses with reason to bop, Hunt was not appeased and remained dour throughout. Mostly he kept his silence, both between songs and, in the case of “On the Ropes,” during. With the singer in a sulk, this rousing anthem from the band’s current album, “Construction for the Modern Idiot,” naturally turned out less than stirring.

Hunt has a reputation as an enfant terrible who usually has something cheeky or sarcastic to say to an audience. Far better his jabs of wit than this silent treatment.

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Despite the dyspeptic behavior that robbed Hunt’s performance of the spunk and humor that are the Wonder Stuff’s most endearing qualities, the show went forward on solid musical footing.

If disengaged from the audience, he remained attuned to the music most of the time, concentrating on his guitar playing, and displaying a forceful and rangy voice (the mix made most of his lyrics hard to decipher).

The band’s performance was sharp as it moved through a varied, if not always distinctive, pop-rock repertoire that ranged from the stormy psychedelia of “Room 410” to songs founded on Celtic folk strains. Martin Bell, a fine rock violinist, was suitably sweet on the folk-inflected material and swirled up a funnel cloud of sound on the rockers.

A good, flexible rhythm section guided the band through numbers that sometimes shifted between sprightly acoustic textures and rolling, tumbling rock. Guitarist Malc Treece shaded Hunt’s leads with good harmonies. A supporting keyboards player, Pete Whittaker, made this a capable bunch all-around.

Hunt was most effective on the last two pre-encore songs, which summoned material that best fit his mood.

“I Wish Them All Dead,” a scathing broadside against pedophiles (it goes so far as to urge the vigilante-style execution of child abusers), found him spitting the words with persuasive vigor against driving music that suggested a particularly mean version of the Monkees hit “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.”

The next number, “Ten Trenches Deep,” was clenched and nasty-tempered, sounding something like the clenched, nasty-tempered chorus of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” from “Tommy.”

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The encore featured a couple of bright, exuberantly played romantic songs, “Golden Green” and “Don’t Let Me Down, Gently.” Both had many in the house hopping about, spontaneously lifted by the music, which led one to wonder whether Hunt could have saved himself a snit by starting the show with them.

At this point, the Wonder Stuff had a chance to let bygones be bygones and finish the evening on a generous and expansive note by playing a few more of the crowd-pleasing, zesty album tracks that remained in reserve.

Instead, it simply called it a night after a stingy set that lasted a couple of ticks over an hour. The band did not play its catchiest, friendliest KROQ hit, “The Size of a Cow,” probably because Hunt had decided from the start that he was going to have one instead.

Second-billed Chapterhouse has zilch for onstage personality, but the young British band is evolving an interesting, collage-like musical approach. Most songs incorporated a couple of canned elements from dance music--smashing, techno-rave beats and gurgling sequencer rhythms, but they also benefited from the propulsion of a live drummer.

Chapterhouse overlaid those dance-derived beats with dense blankets of diffuse guitar sound and--most appealing--wispy, harmony-sweetened pop melodies.

The result was trance-n-dance music that, though not transcendent in effect like the best work of the premier techno performer, Moby, at least had some of the pop appeal of the similarly wispy and melodious American guitar band, the now-defunct Galaxie 500.

The two singer-guitarists, Andrew Sherriff and Stephen Patman, came up with some gauzy, plaintive vocal harmonies. Keep it up and they could become the Crosby & Nash of the dream-pop set. For now, Chapterhouse, which introduced the dance-beat elements on its new album, “Blood Music,” is more an appealing backdrop than a commanding musical presence. Its best, most pithy melodies, such as “Confusion Trip” and “Love Forever,” suggest that the band could become more than pleasant wallpaper.

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Orange County’s Primitive Painters opened with a set that was forceful and well-honed, if monochromatic.

Guitarist Jim Ustick slashed hard and made deft use of his wah-wah distortion unit. The rhythm section was adept at marching, surging beats a la early U2.

Front man Dennis Crupi’s vocal range is limited, but he showed good presence and an ability to mix idealistic conviction with a sense of ironic detachment well suited to the emotional push and pull of the Painters’ songs.

The band, which released an album, “Dirtclods,” in 1992, would often confess helplessness in the face of life’s riddles, absurdities and miseries, but with music that simultaneously sought to attack and transcend.

There is a lot of potential power in that alternating emotional current, but, to hop quickly to another metaphor, Primitive Painters needs to broaden its palette of styles and influences to sustain interest.

The band’s set-closing cover of the Clash song “Somebody Got Murdered” was an especially good choice. It expressed helplessness and anguish over senseless violence, but it kept on hammering all the same. In a society that keeps its morgues well-stocked, this anthem is all too apt.