Pulling back from the edge

Jack Johnson is a bit of a curious phenomenon in the music world.

With alternative rock radio mired in either aggressive/depressive nu-metal or the uber-hip sound of retro-rock, and with the pop charts dominated by divas and rappers, the onetime pro surfer has quietly built a minor empire.

His formula: low-key, hummable songs that neither offend nor provoke but sound instead like quiet observations made from a porch on a summer afternoon.

As fans at the sold-out Greek Theatre on Monday swayed and sang along with the affable singer-songwriter, two things were clear: (A) Johnson has surpassed his former surfer-singer novelty status and (B) lots of young people don’t want their music to yell at them.

“When we’re in the studio in Hawaii, we always think, ‘Everyone’s trying to be edgy. Let’s not be edgy. Let’s be smooth,’ ” he said backstage before his performance.

The 30-year-old, whose latest album (“In Between Dreams”) has sold 1.3 million copies since its release in April, began his musical career as a teenager in his native Hawaii. He played in a backyard punk band, covering songs by aggressive thrash bands such as Suicidal Tendencies and Minor Threat.

Despite these hard-core roots, Johnson’s un-hip muse led him elsewhere.

“We’d play all this hard-core punk in the garage at my brother’s house,” he continued. “Then quietly at night, I’d learn how to play Cat Stevens, Neil Young and Jimmy Buffett.”

Because of his punk roots, Johnson sometimes feels self-conscious about his lighter musical sensibilities when he’s written about in rock magazines.

“I don’t listen to anybody who is playing in my genre at all,” he said. “I don’t like it. I listen to the White Stripes, the Shins, Radiohead.... “

But despite the easy-listening, latter-day-Buffett label so often tossed at Johnson, his rapid-fire, lyrical delivery -- filled with enough internal rhyme to make a high school English teacher proud -- more approximates hip-hop phrasing than that of classic folk.

Some music makes you feel as if you’re sitting in the center of everything, steeped in politics, rebellion, apathy or ennui. But Johnson makes music that is more of an escape, a feeling that approximates a two-week vacation on Oahu, looking on at the events of the world from a beach blanket beneath a palm tree.

“That’s definitely how I felt when I first went to college,” he said. “You grow up there, and as a kid, all you know is your island. Then you go somewhere else and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, this world is gigantic.’

“It feels like you’re from a different planet.”

He’s used this perspective to great effect, and even though he has yet to garner much critical acclaim, his audience doesn’t seem to mind.

Most rock concerts are a celebration of an idea. Sometimes it’s anger, sometimes it’s urbanity; occasionally it’s sorrow.

For the fans at the Greek on Monday -- children, surfers, indie kids, baby boomers -- the show was a celebration of simple pleasures and basic values.

Throughout, there was the sense that no matter one’s concerns about a modern world and its ever-present “edge,” it’s still important to recognize that life goes on, to occasionally simply tap your foot and hum.