POP MUSIC REVIEW : BLANCMANGE DEBUTS STILL IN ITS MOLD

It’s all too fitting that the group Blancmange named itself after a dessert that’s bland, squishy and comes from a mold.

In its show Monday at the Roxy, the English sextet alternated between effervescent, formulaic synth-pop and imitations of Talking Heads. The former were too lightweight to work as anything more than functional dance music, and singer Neil Arthur is too much of a softie to pull off the neurotic tension of the latter.

What kept the evening from being dull was the audience’s intensity. Blancmange--led by the core duo of Arthur and keyboardist Stephen Luscombe--has been making records for four years, but this show (the first of four sold-out nights at the club, to be followed by a Saturday concert at UC Irvine) marked its American debut.

That meant that the trendy, dance-pop crowd had a lot of receptiveness stored up for the group, and the heroes’ welcome seemed to spur the musicians to bring as much force as possible to their playing.

That still wasn’t enough to redeem the material, whose best features are its melodious hooks and dance-floor beats, and whose most glaring flaws are its lack of originality and overall shortage of inspiration.

A big help in the good-will department was the absence of pretension and fashion-consciousness--they came on like just-folks, never inspiring the sort of “who-do-these-twerps-think-they-are?” response triggered by the Spandau Ballet types.

One question, though: Why did Arthur credit everyone in the band by his full name except for the black back-up singers, who were introduced simply as Vicki and Bernita. They don’t merit patronizing--especially after the latter’s sax solo proved to be the liveliest instrumental moment of the show.

Second-billed Timbuk 3, a boy-girl duo from Austin, Tex., has something of a post-hippie street-singers aura. Every song was too long, and the pretaped rhythm and bass tracks were distracting, but the sharp guitar work, tangy harmonies and offbeat, intriguing songs showed lots of promise.