Pulse-Raising 98 Degrees Turns Up the Grooves

In the highly competitive world of preteen pop, image is everything. For 98 Degrees, it’s all about chiseled pectoral muscles and sleeveless shirts. If the Backstreet Boys are the genre’s chivalrous gentleman callers, and ‘N Sync are rosy-cheeked homeboys, then 98 Degrees are the beefcake pinups whom girls like to tape inside their lockers. Well-toned and oozing benign eroticism, the quartet came on like macho romantics at the Wiltern Theatre on Thursday night, flexing their honeyed vocal chops while looking like Chippendales dancers.

Like those of the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, 98 Degrees’ stage show resembles a Disneyland attraction. The immaculately grimy set, with its girders and stage risers, looked like something from the musical “Rent,” and the band’s grand entrance--they emerged from time machine capsules wearing biohazard bodysuits--was pure “X-Files” parody.

Even though their fan base appears to be even younger than that of the Backstreets, 98 Degrees delivers a slightly more muscular brand of dance music. Backed by a quartet of studio heavies that laid down thick grooves, 98 Degrees offered material that used classic funk bass lines to gird the strenuously lovelorn dance-pop songs. They even threw in Prince’s “1999” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”--spoon-feeding old-school R&B; to grade-school kids. It was dance music as pure visceral sensation, and mostly forgettable.