The Muscle-Bound Sound

Matthew Sweet paused midway through his set at the Coach House on Thursday night to strike a defiant stance and announce, with a dramatic sneer: “Hey, this pop stuff isn’t for wusses.”

Actually, we’re making that up. Sweet was, in fact, blandly cheerful in all his between-songs comments, with not a hint of defiance or drama to his nonrevealing, nice-guy persona.

But if the sentiment we just fabricated wasn’t stated, it was in fact the implicit point of the concert, one of the brawniest that could be presented by any rocker known for inviting pure-pop.

Since 1984, this native of Lincoln, Neb., has been tuning his distinctive, high and reedy voice to well-crafted pop songs in the tradition of Todd Rundgren, Badfinger and ‘60s-vintage Who--all of whom were played over the club’s sound system as a prelude to Sweet’s performance. It’s a tradition that has lost much of its commercial clout in the ‘90s, although Sweet, with a couple of gold albums to his credit, has been one of the most successful American practitioners recently of old-line melodic rock.

He always has gone for more heft live than on record, but Thursday’s 1 hour, 45-minute workout was particularly muscular, as if he were running an experiment in pop-rock physics: mass times density equals X.

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In this case, X hit the spot more often than not as Sweet and his four-man band played with satisfying garage-band intensity and force. But the approach also had its drawbacks.

Sweet’s chief distinguishing characteristic is a readily recognizable singing voice that stands out as truly his own, not a replica of some ‘60s or ‘70s model. It wasn’t completely drowned by the onslaught, but it was up to its neck in his band’s dense swirl when it should have been shooting forth with clear definition.

Sweet has added keyboard player Paul Chastain since his last tour, and Chastain’s role, besides fleshing out bassist Tony Marsico’s backing vocals, seemed to be as a thickening agent, a musical emulsifier who played hardly any parts that could be made out clearly and sometimes just gummed up the works.

Lead guitarist Ivan Julian is a living link to the ‘70s New York City underground movement that presaged punk rock, and that Sweet has drawn on to put some propulsion into his pop. But Julian, once a member of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, came nowhere near the invention and fire that Sweet has gotten out of Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, two other alumni of that NYC scene.

Julian played with some flair but lacked the special spark in his tone or drama in his phrasing that the best rock players command. That left drummer Ric Menck as the instrumental star of the band, bashing out beats that gave the music a garage-y freedom without crossing the line to sloppiness.

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What Sweet failed to produce was any sense of intimacy or personal connection. The brawn was fine in its place, but he used it as a shield against stark self-revelation. He should have created moments in which the band piped down or took a break, allowing his voice and feelings to come through with unscreened immediacy.

His one “unplugged” number, an encore version of “Thought I Knew You” (from “Girlfriend,” the album that gave him his commercial breakthrough in 1991), was nothing special. And rough, offhanded treatment fairly well ruined an encore cover of “Waterloo Sunset,” a beautiful reverie by the Kinks that requires tenderness and inwardness.

Sweet did show his winsome way with a pop melody in songs such as “We’re the Same,” “Sick of Myself” (from his best album, “100% Fun”) and “I’ve Been Waiting.” These examples of plaintive melody coupled with rock drive are good enough to be mentioned alongside such exemplars as Rundgren’s “Couldn’t I Just Tell You” and Badfinger’s “Baby Blue.”

That’s the challenge facing a ‘90s rocker who is really a ‘60s and ‘70s pop-rock traditionalist: to come up with songs that are not just replicas of the tradition’s glory days, but worthwhile additions that breathe freshness, if not originality, into the old forms.

As a lyricist, Sweet isn’t strong enough to pull a listener into a vivid world hatched by artistic imagination, but he is good enough to examine his almost-constant subject--love ardently sought turning into love bitterly lost--without sounding stale or cliched.

“Where You Get Love,” one of a half-dozen tracks culled from his solid but not exceptional new album, “Blue Sky on Mars,” copied the chiming march of Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” as it posed Sweet’s key question: “Where do you get love? Down below or from somewhere above?”

Thursday, Sweet sang more about hellhounds snarling down love’s bitter trail than about aspiring romantics reaching for heavenly bliss. One of the best numbers was “Girlfriend,” an upbeat pop hit that Sweet transformed with spat phrases and a fraying bark into the song not of a hopeful suitor, but of a vengeful predator.

But, unlike his fellow pop classicist Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Sweet didn’t quiet down and open up enough to make a memorable display of ugly, hardened scars and the soft, wounded feelings beneath them. In a good’s night rocking that didn’t connect enough emotionally or personally, mass times density equaled a wall to hide behind.

Fastball, the second-billed trio from Austin, Texas, played a sharp set of power-pop songs that were good enough to hold interest but not distinctive enough to sink in deeply.

The band’s strengths included good tandem vocals by guitarist Miles Zuniga and bassist Tony Scalzo. Scalzo’s trebly, supple bass often was the lead instrument, while Zuniga’s bluesy feel helped Fastball connect a bit to the rootsy side of Austin rock--although the band sounded more often like a colleague of such aggressive, Southern California power-poppers as Redd Kross and 22 Jacks.

Scalzo didn’t mention it, but the show was a homecoming for him: Before moving to Austin, he knocked around the O.C. alt-rock scene, playing during the early ‘90s in Electric Cool Aid, the Goods, Naked Soul and Tender Fury.