POP MUSIC REVIEW : Being So Near Means Being Far From Artistic

“Pornography,” according to one of Joseph Campbell’s TV lectures, was James Joyce’s term for art that exists primarily to advance a cause.

Joyce’s terminology was idiosyncratic and extreme, but it serves a useful warning. When artists start assuming that the proper object of their work is the betterment of humanity, that Joycean sneer might remind them that it’s hard enough just to achieve an honest understanding and vivid rendering of some fragment of human experience.

Holly Near probably would turn redder than her flowing hair at being pegged a pornographer, regardless how the term is being recoined. But by Joyce’s lights, pornography is what she often sells.

The 45-year-old singer’s career has been practically inseparable from her causes. She has used her artist’s platform to raise money for and proclaim the rightness of the various social struggles on her agenda, all of them typically identified with the political left.

Near’s show Friday night at the Coach House drew about 200 of the faithful, with support for pacifism, environmentalism, economic and racial justice, women’s rights and the moral legitimacy of gay and lesbian sexuality being the primary articles of faith.

As a rally designed to reaffirm that faith and rekindle spirits for the ongoing struggle, the concert was effective. In terms of artistry, as measured by the singer’s ability and command and the vividness of her material, it was a pretty ho-hum 1 1/2 hours.

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Like Judy Collins before her, Near started out as a pure folkie during the 1970s and has branched into Broadway material and cabaret songs (along the way she has released a steady stream of albums on her own Northern California label, Redwood Records, and found a niche in the public eye, and in the music market, as one of the first women in pop to be a declared lesbian). But Near’s voice is cut-rate contrasted with the purity of a Collins. It’s a pleasant enough but basically unremarkable instrument that lacks the presence or fullness to serve as an attraction by itself.

Lots of singers do involving work without a great set of pipes by putting a distinctive spin on strong material. Near’s offerings were too often flat and obvious.

A few songs, though, had some zip and spice.

One was a wry, breezy depiction of women playing the dating game (with other women), “Nothing Short of a Perfect Night Will Do.” A rendition of “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” from “The Fantasticks,” started with a becoming fragility and intimacy, then kicked up the intensity, with Near’s longtime accompanist, pianist John Bucchino, invigorating it with a burst of robust, swinging rhythm. A similar tactic worked in a medley of two more chestnuts from the Broadway tradition, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” and “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

Much of the rest was right-minded (assuming you’re with Near politically, and this predominantly female audience clearly was) but downright dull. Historical grounding lent some color and interest to a Charlie King composition holding out the executed Massachusetts anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, as martyrs in the march to economic equality.

Near was forceful delivering a dark, surging song honoring Harriet Tubman, heroine of the underground railroad that conducted fleeing slaves to freedom before the Civil War. But the simplistic, slogan-heavy “Great Peace March” was so lacking in dimension or poetry that it came off as “Up With People” for lefties. It got one of the evening’s biggest ovations.

Such declarations may swell the already-converted breast, but the higher artistry lies in songs that offer pertinent, tellingly detailed stories rather than baldly advising us how to aspire and what to think. Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” doesn’t contain a line that says, “racism is evil and we must stop it.” It takes you to the movies and lets you draw your own conclusions about what you’ve witnessed. Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” doesn’t deliver a speech about how poverty can destroy dreams; it puts you inside the struggling dreamer’s head.

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Near had the sense to keep between-songs speechifying to a minimum. For the most part, her tone was lightly humorous or familiarly anecdotal. She alluded indirectly to the O.J. Simpson saga as she introduced a fanciful song about a woman in the Old West taking violent measures to defend herself from oppressive men. Near emphasized that her intention wasn’t to judge the case but to point to the possibility of saner outcomes for lives shadowed by domestic violence: “‘It’s something that can be healed if we seek help.”

In something of a summation near the end, the singer defined cynics as those who falsely expect progress to be quick and easy, then fall into bitter disillusionment when things don’t magically improve. Instead, she said, it’s imperative to push on with “brave and small acts of kindness,” always keeping in mind that isolated grace notes somehow, over time, can become part of a chorus for change.

Only the most entrenched cynic could fail to nod assent to that. The problem with Near’s show was that, in her eagerness to reassure and reinvigorate her audience, she failed to compellingly portray the inward struggle between hope and doubt that afflicts any sentient soul.

She does give doubt its due on her album “Sky Dances,” in which the prevailing mood is somber, chastened and yearning. In concert, those complexities were smoothed over or ignored. Near provided a tonic for the troops, but that made for a dull evening out for anyone not already enlisted.