UNEVEN WAVES

In a way, Katrina Leskanich is the Sarah Ferguson of pop music: She’s not very glamorous, but she seems high-spirited, good-humored and down-to-earth. In short, she and her band, Katrina and the Waves, were a lot of fun during most of their Friday night show at the Palace. At its best, Katrina and the Waves is a pure pop band, rich with buoyant harmonies and tuneful, catchy pop songs plus Leskanich’s terrific lead vocals.

But Friday’s show went astray when the Waves tried to bear down on full-tilt rock ‘n’ roll and R&B; songs that more often than not obscured the group’s charm. Yes, these delightful popsters are capable of being dull rockers--and the Palace show swung between those two extremes. The audience clearly prefers the pop side: they made “Walking on Sunshine” a 1985 hit but have mostly ignored the band since then, and Friday’s turnout was surprisingly small.