Lighter Side of Sugar Ray

“Are you ready for the cheesiest concert experience you ever had?” Sugar Ray’s singer, Mark McGrath, asked the Universal Amphitheatre audience Wednesday. Well, McGrath keeps his promises. Sugar Ray proceeded to drift further from its Southern California punk-pop roots toward a broader entertainment evoking the days of Sammy and Dino.

That’s no criticism. When McGrath donned a loud sport coat to host a singing contest between fans midway into the 90-minute set, the singer was a genuinely good-natured and amusing personality. But it wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll. Sugar Ray is light entertainment now, where even McGrath’s pelvic thrusts seem somehow wholesome.

None of which would matter if Sugar Ray weren’t also the maker of such unavoidable pop hits as “Every Morning,” “Someday” and other examples of watered-down reggae, rock and DJ effects. The band’s self-titled new album opens with “Answer the Phone,” a brooding power-pop tune, but Sugar Ray today mostly abandons rock volume for light, good-time music that Jimmy Buffett fans would recognize.

On Wednesday, a welcome burst of adrenaline emerged from the rocking, revving guitars of 1997’s “RPM.” The band also stretched “Fly” into an unlikely epic, as fans hopped along to the riffs before McGrath stopped to say, “Can I go and hug my mom?” Which he did. McGrath broke his cool only when Kid Rock unexpectedly wandered onto the stage to sing along, as he had done for the support act, his bandmate Uncle Kracker. Like the Kid, Kracker and his five-man band mixed classic rock with hip-hop flavors, a strangely effective concoction on “Yeah Yeah Yeah.” Tough and unpretentious.