From Pinback, a cerebral set with underlying warmth

May 28, 2005|Globe Correspondent

Most performers looking to make a connection with their audience tend to do so by reaching out in some way, by opening up and extending themselves to the crowd. At the Paradise on Thursday, Pinback frontman Rob Crow -- noticeably uncomfortable with stage banter, willing to chastise talkative patrons near the front of the stage, and singing most of his songs with his eyes closed -- chose instead to make the audience come to him.

That's a much tougher road, but Pinback traveled it without too many bumps. The band -- expanded from just Crow and bassist/keyboardist Armistead Burwell Smith IV on recordings like last year's ''Summer in Abaddon" to a five-piece on tour -- specialized in much the same type of deliberate, abstruse songs that Modest Mouse explored on ''The Lonesome Crowded West." With their spindly guitar and bass figures pushing them along, the songs were characterized by an undercurrent that might have seemed sinister if there weren't warmth at the core.

Part of that warmth came from the prominence of Smith's bass, which he played like a co-lead instrument, on equal terms with Crow's guitar. Eschewing standard single-note bass lines, Smith approached his instrument variously like a rhythm guitar or a bajo sexto, coaxing multiple notes out of it at a time. His rumbling combined with Cameron Jones's subtly complex drumming to create a solid foundation that kept Pinback's songs from getting stale despite the sameness of the material. There were no such problems at the end of the band's main set, which featured the 1-2-3 punch of the up-tempo and knotty ''Fortress," the rubbery ''Making Plans for Nigel" groove of ''Prog," and the churning ''AFK."

Dublin band the Dudley Corporation started off with a set of pounding Mission of Burma-like songs. It was followed by Aqueduct, three nerdy white boys from Seattle who delivered some effective keyboard-based pop and toyed with smug irony on covers of the Geto Boys' ''Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta" and R. Kelly's ''Ignition Remix."