Bloom Adds Humor to His Passion at McCabe’s

You’d think that a singer who renamed himself Luka Bloom after the characters of Suzanne Vega and James Joyce, respectively--would have more of a sense of humor than Bloom (ne Barry Moore) evidences on “Riverside,” his earnestly passionate but not exactly yuk-filled debut album. Luckily, the Gaelic groupies who packed McCabe’s for the Irish folk singer’s two shows Friday got to hear Bloom in laughter as well as Bloom in love.

His romanticism can be weighty on record but was more catching live, in the context of Bloom’s between-song wit and the sheer velocity of some of the fastest, most forceful 12-string you’ll ever hear. Though there was no skimping on the self-serious material--the worst offender being “Gone to Pablo,” his mawkish glorification of the suicide of Picasso’s lover--Bloom atoned with a reverent rendition of L L Cool J’s gushy rap ballad “I Need Love” that put a nice cap on his own more heated romantic odes.