Voices Need More Focus on Sound : Pop Beat: Critics may love the group because of the physical identification factor. But the band’s music seems hardly worthy of all the attention.

Believe it or not, former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth did leave us with a bit of wisdom before his career began drifting toward obscurity.

The flamboyant singer once quipped that the reason rock critics loved Elvis Costello so much (as opposed to acts such as Van Halen) was because they all looked like Costello.

Now, alternative rock bands seem to have taken Roth’s observation to heart and are dressing like some of the geeks who review them--from the thick glasses on three of Velocity Girl’s five members to the flood pants favored by certain members of Weezer.

But no one recently seems to have mastered the art of relating to the critics like the Ohio band Guided by Voices. Its 1994 album, “Bee Thousand,” finished No. 8 in the Village Voice’s annual poll of the nation’s pop critics, while its new “Alien Lanes” received four stars in Rolling Stone. The band is so loved by East Coast critics that one even joined the group last year. Jim Greer, formerly with Spin magazine, is now the bass player.

One reason for the Guided by Voices attraction may be the physical identification factor. The band members, like so many critics, are in their mid-30s, possess couch-potato physiques and are often pictured in worn, bland clothing and anti-hairdos.

Another reason may be the group’s quirky, abstract approach to the music (very Costello but not as well-executed). The band strings together clever but not necessarily matching melodies that frequently cause the average listener to remark, “I don’t get it.” Critics love the chance to explain the unexplainable.

Whatever the basis for the critical infatuation, the band’s music seems hardly worthy of all the attention. For one thing, its songs come off unfinished. The quintet, which has been around for more than 10 years and has put out several independent releases, plays pop hook after pop hook in an underproduced setting, but never seems to lay down an entire song. Instead, it splices many of the catchiest moments of pop music and ties them together with doses of nonchalance.

Will Guided by Voices stand up in the real world, where people listen to music because it actually sounds good? Probably not, but judge for yourself when they play the Troubadour and Spaceland next week--if there are any tickets left after the press guest list is finalized.

* Guided by Voices plays 8 p.m. Thursday at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd . , West Hollywood, $10. (310) 276-6168. 9 p.m. Friday at Spaceland, 1717 Silver Lake Blvd., $10. (213) 413-4442.

UnPhair: Liz Phair’s show at the Wiltern Theatre on Tuesday was the singer-songwriter’s strongest here yet, but it wasn’t likely that some of the drooling audience members noticed. They were too busy waiting for the naughty bits in “Flower”--namely, the lustful line about oral sex.

When she finally got around to it late in her set, several audience members howled like a bunch of junior high schoolers looking at a girlie magazine.

“Flower” has become something of an albatross around Phair’s neck, fueling an image of her as nothing more than a witty bundle of titillation. According to Phair, she actually wrote the lyrics “so I could bring (the offenders) in close enough to slap them.”

But Phair overestimated. Maybe next time around she should replace her original lyrics with squeaky-clean images a la Doris Day, and see who will stick around for the true wallop.

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A Band Worth Some Hoo Ha: London’s Transglobal Underground. The band samples traditional Middle Eastern music over dance-club beats and comes up with an unparalleled blend of old and new. Far from pasteurized world music or seamless ambience, the “International Times” album (on Epic) is big, booming and, above all, passionate.