Gothic Art-Rock Grandeur and Dark Romance

With their romantically eerie, organ-driven sound redolent of foggy, gaslit nights in a London of Lord Byron or Jack the Ripper, their face-painting singer-songwriter decked out like a Gypsy crystal-ball reader and their core following in a goth-rock underground devoted to vampire chic, Babylonian Tiles is guaranteed to give good Halloween.

But, like “Basking in the Sun at Midnight,” the O.C. band’s previous CD, “Green Midnight Glow” realizes greater ambitions than mere spook-appeal.

The Tiles’ now-stately, now-driving swirl of layered, darkly evocative sound still has some basis in psychedelic, keyboard-driven influences such as the Doors. But art-rock grandeur takes precedence on “Glow.” Swaying tempos and classically regal flourishes recall the likes of Renaissance on “Boulevard,” while the more muscular “Far, Far Away” echoes the Nice, a ‘60s precursor of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Rather than content herself with a stylish, well-played excursion into the misty, pleasurably shivery-spooky dark, bandleader Bryna Golden injects psychological and emotional content into her songs.

“Zero Within Me” visits the dark night of the artistic soul, with its confession of creative inertness: “I get my spark from others’ inspiration / I can’t find it within myself.” And, rather than romanticize death and decay, as you might expect of a more fantasy-driven goth band, Golden fashions “Not Mine to Give” into a soft lament for a life ebbing away into addiction or depression. When the Tiles lay on the spook-rock cliches on “Bugged,” which features every bump-in-the-night musical riff in the book, it’s for comic effect: The song is a humorously flinty look at insomnia.

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Babylonian Tiles has reined in its more thrusting, darkly tumbling energy too much, letting it fly only sporadically in arrangements that ebb before Golden, guitarist Tim Thayer and drummer Brian Schreiber can hit peak intensity. But there is compensation in the graceful shimmer and sway of “Not Mine to Give,” “Our Side of Town” and “Going and Going Away.” (The last is a winsome look at the moment in which consciousness falls into eclipse, either through death or sleep.)

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Golden has a small, somewhat flat voice that easily could sink the whole project, but she keeps afloat with astute double-tracking, harmonies and a solid sense of how to phrase and act out a lyric. Still, if Babylonian Tiles is to become something special, Golden should consider firing herself as primary singer and finding a rich-voiced Loreena McKennitt or Mary Fahl (October Project) type to embody the music’s dark romance.

(Available from St. Thomas Records, P.O. Box 7427, Orange, CA 92863)

Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.

* Babylonian Tiles and Liquid Southern California play tonight at Lumpy Gravy, 7311 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. All ages. 8 p.m. $5. (213) 934-9400 (club) or (714) 890-1577 (band info line).