Reaching Back, Sylvian Struggles With Balance

Can music be both understated and grandiose? When David Sylvian achieved that delicate balance at the Wiltern Theatre on Tuesday, the results were mesmerizing. But when he didn’t it was perplexing, because he’s clearly capable of transcendent work.

That’s been about par for the career of Sylvian, an arty British crooner in the tradition of David Bowie and Bryan Ferry. And perhaps it was appropriate, as this show was a retrospective of that career, reaching back nearly 25 years to his days fronting the band Japan through his catalog of solo work and collaborations with such singular figures as Robert Fripp and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The aesthetic tug of war was acted out on stage. The dapper Sylvian (think Bono styled by Robert Palmer) was at the center, and drummer Steve Jansen (a Japan veteran) and bassist Keith Lowe were on the right, shaping the music with economical yet complex grace and power. To the left, though, guitarist Timothy Young and keyboardist Matt Cooper often tipped the scale toward the overwrought with excessive showiness in both playing and manner.

Cooper, in particular, while possessing accomplished jazz-informed chops, regularly detracted from the emotions and musical colors of the songs both with inappropriate noodling and gratuitous body English and grimaces.

Still, on “Heartbeat (Taini Kaiki II),” a Sakamoto collaboration, recorded sounds blended with Sylvian’s languid vocals to bridge art and soul. On “Cover Me With Flowers” there was a marriage of poetic (if over-arching) lyrics with rhythms and dynamics recalling Peter Gabriel.

The audience cheered every song and solo as if they contained epiphanies. But it was easy to picture even the staunchest loyalists being swayed had Sylvian stripped the performance down to just the understated beauty it contained.