Engaging, Emotional Vision From Friday

Talk about in your face. Gavin Friday capped his set at LunaPark on Wednesday with a stroll through the audience, finding a dance partner or two while singing “Angel,” a shimmering, propulsive prayer of love from his new album, to his listeners at point-blank range. It was an apt way to end a show that aimed to discover and affirm an emotional link among lost souls.

Friday, a longtime crony of U2’s Bono and the leader of the notorious ‘70s avant-rock band the Virgin Prunes, is a semilegendary figure in the Dublin rock and performance-art underground. His show, built around his current album, “Shag Tobacco,” was a phantasmagoric cabaret piece--alternately theatrical and casual, somewhat erratic but ultimately engaging.

The musical territory ranged from classic cabaret to noir ballads to straightforward art-pop that evoked David Bowie, Roxy Music and the Pet Shop Boys.

Friday’s three musicians, including primary collaborator Maurice Seezer, blended reeds, accordion, guitar and electronics into a shifting tapestry that provided appropriate flavors, but often lacked the sensuousness that the spirit of the songs required. Friday’s rough whisper of a voice seemed more limited on stage than it is on record, but his fervent vision easily transcends such restrictions.