Steve Wynn and Come: More Is Less

Granted they had only two days of rehearsals before their first public gig, but the on-stage union of Boston's smartest guitar band, Come, and West Coast songwriter Steve Wynn for a set last Monday at Mama Kin wasn't much fun. Unless wobbly-legged garage-rock nostalgia is your idea of a good time.

The problem was that Wynn's songs seemed to temper the incendiary spirit of Come, a band who've mastered the flip-of-the-switch dynamic rush, the creation of pregnant storm clouds through the convergence of razor-wire harmonics, the honing of lyrics that might not be blatant in their exposition but nonetheless hit the deep spots in the psyche -- raising questions about identity, reality, morality. And in fact those virtues -- save for the lyrics, since only Wynn's material and a few covers were performed -- provided the highs of the performance. The night got no better than when Come singer/guitarist Thalia Zedek leaned over her amp to kick open a song with a spray of clangorous chords that swelled as they hung in the air, or when her guitar-foil, Chris Brokaw, built a wall of slide guitar as Wynn sang, "The angels don't talk to me at all." Hell, the goddamn angels were talking to him right then, thanks to Brokaw.

But Wynn's tunes don't really lend themselves to the big bang, clang, and buzz that Come generate so well. His chord progressions come straight out of the annals of '60s garage rock. No weird tunings, no dissonances, no growth since his early-'80s days as one of the heroes of LA's so-called Paisley Underground, a clutch of bands steeped in the details of -- as Lenny Kaye once put it -- "the original psychedelic era" that included Wynn's magnificent Dream Syndicate. Even the Dream Syndicate numbers he revived at Mama Kin, like "Medicine Show," were so straight-on in their construction that the band had few wrinkles to fidget with. In short, it was no fun hearing Come compelled to play like the Chocolate Watch Band or, when Brokaw was etching out the slow, syrup-thick solos he does so well, like the Amboy Dukes.

There is charm in Wynn's legacy, especially in the grooves of The Dream Syndicate EP and their debut album, the lyrically poetic and feedback-fueled (hey, what the hell happened to original Dream Syndicate guitarist Karl Percoda, anyway?) The Days of Wine and Roses. For me, the latter in particular came from the same playful and scary place as Pink Floyd's first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn -- one foot in pop's cradle, the other in some demon's grave. Brilliant shit. But Wynn's writing, at least to judge by the live mix, seems to have become banal over time. One usually uncynical scenester at the show compared the new songs to the Eagles, but I wouldn't go that far.

How well these songs work might best be judged with the release of Melting in the Dark on the Zero Hour label this spring. The CD features Wynn backed by Come, as he was at Mama Kin, but presumably with more rehearsals and the benefit of studio production. And on stage, regardless of what Wynn was singing, it was a pleasure to hear him chew syllables like a man mouthing chunks of dry earth during his most passionate moments. He does have a distinctive voice; if only he could again find something distinctive to do with it.

-- Ted Drozdowski