Cohen’s Level of Enthusiasm Doesn’t Match His Skills

In a splintered, free-ranging era in pop music, one of the few obvious recent trends is the rise of the sons of famous parents. It has yielded Jakob Dylan (son of Bob), Rufus Wainwright (son of Loudon and Kate McGarrigle), Sean Lennon (son of John and Yoko Ono), and now 25-year-old Adam Cohen (son of cult hero Leonard), who sang at the Troubadour on Monday.

Cohen’s set exposed the potential downside of this development: Artists who need time to develop and mature are awarded choice record deals and big exposure before their time. With his father listening inconspicuously in the back of the club, Cohen sang the moody pop numbers from his new self-titled Columbia debut album with an off-putting enthusiasm. He has a smooth, rich voice, but his writing stumbled in too-literal songs such as “Quarterback,” and Cohen’s over-the-top delivery--like a cross between a lounge singer’s and Celine Dion’s--needs to be taken down 10 notches.

A rugged, endearing antidote to Cohen’s premature gusto was offered by Isabel Monteiro, the Brazilian-born singer and bassist for the evening’s headliner, the British band Drugstore.

She went onstage in a cowboy hat, swigging from a bottle of wine like a Hells Angel. Drugstore’s song “El President”--a duet with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke from its current album, “White Magic for Lovers”--is a hit in England and, with its winning, textured mid-tempo rock peppered with country and Latin flavors, the band proved that it definitely deserves its buzz.