POP MUSIC REVIEW : Belew, Straw--Different Styles, Distinctly Impressive

Aside from the fact that Adrian Belew and Syd Straw each bear a slight resemblance to Shelly Duval, pairing the techno-guitar hero and the eclectic art-rock singer might not seem the most obviously successful double bill. In Sunday night’s show at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, though, each delivered distinctively powerful sets that drew encore calls from the capacity crowd.

Though Belew still draws a variety of voices from his guitar, ranging from the animal to the orchestral, the context he places them in has changed delightfully for the better since his early-’80s stint with the coldly technical King Crimson. His current solo album, “Mr. Music Head,” continues the emphasis on adventurous pop songs--with an acknowledged nod to the “Revolver”-era Beatles--that Belew pursued in recent years with the sadly unsuccessful Bears.

The melodies in his new songs may not be as effervescent as the Bears’ material, nor is the band sound as rich--drummer Mike Hodges and keyboardist Rick Fox are decidedly more techno-oriented--but the performance was still overridingly high-spirited. It was buoyed, no doubt, by Belew’s accurate bit of self-fulfilling prophecy with “Oh Daddy.” (It has to tickle to get his first hit with a song in which his daughter asks, “Oh daddy, when you gonna write that big hit?”)

Belew took a couple of long guitar excursions, most notably on a guitar synthesizer preamble to “Big Electric Cat,” but more often he confined his musical menagerie to licks and solos that supported the moods of the songs. Those ranged from the reflective “1967,” with its atmosphere set by the fragile sound of Belew’s Dobro guitar, to a pounding, celebratory version of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

Singer Syd Straw must have a knack for placing herself in challenging situations. Three yearsago, with the Golden Palominos, she played to audiences expecting that band’s on-disc stars such as Johnny Lydon and Jack Bruce to be fronting the band; instead, they got Straw and found it wasn’t a bad trade at all. Her current debut solo album, “Surprise,” finds her musical and lyrical vision consistently riding herd over a fat roster of sidemen--including Michael Stipe, John Doe, Van Dyke Parks and Richard Thompson--who are typically known for packing their own encompassing visions.

Though confined to a short set before an unacquainted audience, she connected with a set that was nothing short of fearless in its mix of powerful, personally felt music and an unfettered sense of play on stage. Backed by a quartet including Dave Alvin and D.J. Bonebrake, Straw’s performance was both muscular and cerebral, with even disparate covers of Sons of the Pioneers and X songs coming off as her own fresh possessions.

Straw isn’t bursting on the scene entirely without flaws. Her lyrics and delivery can seem precious at times--”Unanswered Questions” sounded like an unholy cross between Carly Simon and T-Bone Burnett--and on a couple of songs the band arrangements seemed half-baked. But those were minor compared to Straw’s fresh-but-informed take on American popular music, drawing on Stephen Foster rather than David Foster. Her encore included the earlier Foster’s 1859 “Hard Times,” informed with a new timeliness by her ragged-but-right voice.

Several of her own songs were scarcely less impressive, ranging from the driving stage burner “Think Too Hard” to Straw and Peter Blegvad’s gnawingly insightful “Sphinx,” with lines such as: “Isn’t it hard when it finally hits that your lover is less than a friend / And all your exchanges are just poor counterfeits for tender too precious to spend.”