An off night from Mann, Wainwright

Singer-songwriters Aimee Mann and Rufus Wainwright hit a few bumps during their respective performances at Royce Hall on Thursday. Each had technical difficulties involving guitars, both forgot lyrics and, although they recovered quickly, neither had their best show.

Their sophisticated pop styles took different approaches to exploring intense, often romance-related feelings. Mann and her quartet juxtaposed her cool vocal style and detached observations against nuanced music that provided clues to any given song’s emotional situation, while Wainwright pretty much just opened up and bled.

As such, Mann’s 90-minute headlining set was by far more artful and gratifying. Songs from her current collection, “Lost in Space,” and earlier works subtly slipped wry humor into portraits of often desperate characters and situations, achieving clarity through distance. Yet the pacing was slightly off, with Mann often rambling between songs just long enough to lose what little momentum she’d built up. (She once had comedians do the between-song banter, which seemed silly but might have been a better move.)

She didn’t move much out of mid-tempo, which made even her fine tunes seem beige after a while, despite the different flavors of folk and soul in her melodic pop. Mostly playing acoustic guitar, but occasionally bass and electric, Mann freshened up the arrangements of some older tunes, such as “Calling It Quits” and “Wise Up.”

One of the more satisfying selections was the current “Pavlov’s Bells,” a lilting number with a sonic pull that emphasized the lyrics’ sense of resorting to habit. But even moments like that and the surprise of her playing an encore take on Coldplay’s “The Scientist” added up to slim rewards.

Wainwright’s opening 45-minute set featured old favorites as well as previews from his upcoming “Want” album. Although a vocal faction of the audience was totally enamored, his performance had an over-the-top, Jim Carrey-esque quality that made it hard to take him seriously. One could say his nasal voice and overripe singing style -- which slurred every note together into a shapeless mass of sound -- are simply acquired tastes. But such songs as the new “Pretty Things” were so lame and ridiculously self-indulgent, they were unintentionally funny.

True, there’s intentional humor and wit in his cabaret/Tin Pan Alley-flavored work as well, and he adeptly handled himself on piano and acoustic guitar. But, with both an icky song (“Beauty Mark”) about his mom (singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle) and an angry one (“Dinner at Eight”) about his dad (singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III), things felt more like a therapy session than a concert.