O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Risking Spills, Water Finds Its Thrill Level

In an affable bit of stage chat Friday night at the Coach House, Water’s singer, Dean Bradley, told his home-county fans about how the band went to Mexico recently for a show and spent some free time riding off-road vehicles.

“John fell off five times,” he said, lightly ribbing the drummer, John Guest.

During a 50-minute set, it was Bradley who risked the spills as he went for the thrills of high-range vocal performance. Sometimes, his voice sputtered and fell off as he tried to negotiate the demanding upper registers and falsettos that he mastered in the studio on the band’s strong new debut album, “Nipple.”

But more often the risk paid off, and Bradley’s tuneful but sandpapery voice leaped forcefully toward the emotional peaks he must hit to give that album’s worth of good material its full impact.

There’s a certain cliffhanger excitement--will he or won’t he? can he or can’t he?--for pop fans when they know a singer is going to match his voice against an exacting recorded standard. But the thrill is even greater when a singer takes those leaps with confidence and complete command. Jackson Browne, U2’s Bono Hewson and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe come to mind as singers who have gotten better with age, especially in their upper registers. Water is just starting out, and Bradley’s challenge is to take a good thing and make it great.

Water has the instrumental horsepower to go places, and at the Coach House the four-man band from Garden Grove was able to move unerringly through the undulating terrain of songs that ebb and surge and typically build toward a peak.

The band’s approach turns guitar-rock convention sideways: the two guitarists, Bradley and Howie Howell, provided background texture with rippling arpeggios, thickening fuzz-tones or pealing riffs. The rhythm section more often held the foreground, with Guest’s cymbal patterns and Mark Cohen’s impressively supple and probing bass taking what passes in Water for the lead instrumental parts. The emphasis wasn’t on solo exploits, but on a cohesive, motion-filled sound, and Water pulled it off powerfully.

Still, it would be good to have an occasional contrasting passage that emphasizes more conventional rock-guitar techniques, especially in trade-offs and interplay with that active bass. Some such extroverted instrumental workout--perhaps on an old rock ‘n’ roll cover tune--could serve as a way for the serious-minded Water to introduce a lighter strand into its performances without shattering the mood its music seeks to weave. Also, the more Cohen can lend backup singing support, the better--as he did to good effect on splendid versions of “Spin” and “Under My Skin.”

As Water begins to tour, Bradley will have the challenge of engaging audiences between songs, something he now does likably, but tentatively and not very often. If the ambitious Water gets its way, it will have a long touring road ahead, with plenty of chances to work on the presentation. Right now, the band’s chief asset as a live unit is an obvious engagement with and commitment to the music that comes across despite the players’ reserve.

Water played eight of the 10 songs on “Nipple.” Strong versions of “Spin,” “A Moon’s Afterlife” and the impressively building “Spirit Room Lady” showed the band’s stately, tidal side to good effect, while “Strained” and “Under My Skin” hit with onrushing force. “Seeds” and Water’s traditional closing cover of “Mind Games” gave Bradley his hairiest high-wire moments vocally, although he came on strong down the home stretch of the John Lennon oldie.

Water hasn’t been idle creatively: the set included two new songs--an opening number, “Static,” that lacked the band’s usual pop-melodic focus but served as a moody introduction and instrumental stretching exercise with its ominous, shard-like guitar figures and a tumbling beat a la the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Another new song, “Streets of Cobblestone,” turned up in the encore, sounding like a keeper on first hearing with its questioning tone and strong, episodic construction.

If “Nipple” enjoys the happy fate in the marketplace that it deserves, maybe Water will be back for homecoming shows as a seasoned road band. Then we’ll be able to measure the development of a band that is effective now but has plenty of room to grow. Water plays again April 10 at the Blue Cafe in Long Beach.

On, a veteran O.C. band previously known as Primitive Painters, showed sure signs of growth in its second-billed slot. With two new guitarists joining singer Dennis Crupi and two other holdovers, the band sounded reinvigorated with a harder-edged rock sound and better-honed songs. On, like Primitive Painters, remains essentially an anthem-band with songs riding marching or surging beats, but the character of those anthems changed from angry (“Pay My Way”) to embattled (“Dead and Gone”) to hopefully reaching (“Platform Onward”).

Crupi doesn’t have a wide vocal range, but bassist Pat Homa lent good backup support. On’s front man excelled at working himself into a lather of strong emotion that sold his psychodramas without seeming pretentious or calculating. On could still stand to mix things up more--if it can muster a naked, tender ballad, that would go a long way toward balancing the urgent, large-scale anthems.

Vaseline Machine Gun, a very young band from San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano, may be the world’s only punk band named after an acoustic folk classic--a Leo Kottke piece that’s one of the most exciting slide-guitar instrumentals there is.

The band was raw, thrashy and, despite the use of hardly audible horns, not very distinctive. But singer-guitarist Mike Edwards, decked out in a woman’s dress and lipstick, had the intensity and instincts of a natural showman; the obnoxious punk in him worked to good effect in a cover of “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf, in which the song was transformed from a feel-good ‘60s anthem to something more acerbic with a snarly word change: “close your eyes girl, look inside girl, let the smack take you away.” One wishes Edwards would forget about the dead horse of Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner,” which he trotted out after the show had ostensibly ended, and try working on the Kottke tune instead.