Blades Happily Mixes Salsa With Glossy, Inspired New Tunes

There are few experiences in Latin music that can match seeing Ruben Blades in a good mood.

On Friday at the House of Blues, the temperamental Panamanian singer was smiling from ear to ear. This unusual cheerfulness translated into a nearly three-hour set that included a surprisingly generous serving of his earlier salsa gems.

At his best, Blades combines explosive Afro-Cuban hooks with touching lyrics that have a timeless, literary quality.

At the House of Blues, this pairing of rhythm and poetry shone in classic tunes such as the tender “Paula C,” the satirical “Ligia Elena” and the gritty “Pedro Navaja,” whose lyrics were chanted by the capacity crowd.

Considering Blades’ touch as a salsa composer and the enthusiasm with which he tackled his older material, his latest musical explorations, which have taken him to an altogether different territory, are puzzling.

His new album, “Tiempos,” is a Latino’s take on the kind of glossy, world-beat-inspired mainstream pop that Sting has perfected.

But Blades lacks Sting’s subtlety, and the new songs sounded oddly complacent Friday, even though he did his best to bring them to life on stage.

Equally questionable is Blades’ decision to hire the members of the Costa Rican group Editus as his new band.

Its painfully shy young members were charming to watch, but their New Age stylings can’t possibly match the dangerous combustion of Blades’ previous group Son del Solar, and pianist Oscar Hernandez was sorely missed.

It would be unfair to insist that Blades should stick to salsa for the rest of his career.

But the already deprived genre would benefit tremendously if the singer experimented with styles closer in spirit to the Afro-Cuban mucic, such as jazz, bossa nova or boleros, instead of a Latin-pop fusion that has already been attempted by countless others.