POP MUSIC REVIEW : Sexton Flexes His Songwriting Muscle

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — The cheekbones are still heartthrob sharp, and his grins can still rouse whoops from female fans, but the music that ex-teen-idol Charlie Sexton is making these days hardly ranks as kid stuff.

Tuesday at the Coach House here, the Austin-based singer-guitarist--who at 26 has already logged a 10-year career full of stylistic twists and turns--managed to captivate an audience purely on musical terms with a well-paced set that ranged from rootsy rock to delicate Tex-Mex balladry, with a hint of sunny, Texas-style psychedelia for good measure.

It may have taken Sexton years to find his way as a writer, but on the new material his talents and objectives seemed perfectly meshed. “Sunday Clothes” and “Spanish Words” were both particularly powerful, with the singer using his grittily expressive tenor to deliver evocative, semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales.

Sexton’s lyrics are still over-earnest on occasion, and his songs sometimes lumber under the weight of their dusty melancholia. But each time the set started to drag, things were fired up again with a rocker. “Dark” picked things up with some of Sexton’s chunkiest guitar work, and the chugging “Railroad” had the band working on a cranked-up boogie groove.