POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rembrandts Get Brushoff : Fresh ‘60s Harmonies Get Lost in Hard Rock Frame

NEWPORT BEACH —  If one were to pull a Rembrandt out of a museum and hang it in a noisy bar, it’s very possible no one would ever notice it. There was a not totally unanalogous situation Thursday night at the new Hard Rock Cafe, as the Rembrandts performed there to a crowd that seemed largely unaware of their presence.

The group is far from an unknown quantity, having scored a major hit and MTV rotation last year with the hook-heavy “Just the Way It Is, Baby.” But with little advance publicity for the show and not much buildup in the club that night, most of the people packing the typically packed cafe perhaps didn’t recognize that these were performers who already had been approved for them by the media. And, as people are wont to do lately when presented with excellence that hasn’t been predigested for them by the radio and TV, they ignored it.

The 40 or so people in the 250-capacity club who evidently did show up to see the band--represented by core members Danny Wilde and Phil Solem on acoustic guitars--were treated to a solid, if too short, show of strong pop songs delivered with some of the richest, most distinctive two-man harmonies since Squeeze.

The Rembrandts’ closest contemporaries may be New Zealand’s Crowded House. Each act evinces a sweeping command of ‘60s pop music, with an advanced degree in Beatles. And each is able to spin those powerful influences off into something fresh and free of nostalgia. Crowded House’s Neil Finn may have the edge when it comes to crafting songs that run emotionally deeper with each listening, but Wilde and Solem ski on the surface of pop so deftly that they also beg repeated listenings.

The listening wasn’t the easiest thing Thursday, as the duo was given a needlessly awful sound mix. The acoustic guitars were rendered both tinny and crashingly louder than the vocals throughout the performance, proving that “unplugged” can still be unbearable.

The actual acoustics of the room seemed pretty good, with a warm tone and little of the harshness one would expect from a place with so many hard surfaces. Given proper sound and an audience willing to listen rather than chatter, the Hard Rock could be a fine place to see a show. The price of Thursday’s show, being free, was hard to argue with, and the venue has more such free shows planned.

Wilde and Solem performed on a makeshift stage at one end of the club--not a bad setting, with waving trees and the Hard Rock’s flashing neon Stratocaster visible through the full-length window/doors behind the musicians and Dick Dale’s gold metal-flake Strat glittering directly above.

The majority of the nine-song set came from “The Rembrandts,” their first album, perhaps because they have yet to tour much behind their slow-starting sophomore disc, “Untitled.” They opened with “Follow You Down,” which set forth all of Solem and Wilde’s strengths: fetching melodies, driving, entwined guitars and marvelous harmonies. Solem is a fine guitarist, more given to clever Django Reinhardt-derived runs than to the blues-lick catalogue most players employ.

On some songs, such as the current album’s Badfinger/”Mystery Tour”-era Beatles hybrid “Maybe Tomorrow,” one missed the string arrangements and other niceties of the recorded version. More often, though, the guitars were sufficient to flesh out the tunes. Indeed, horrible sound mix aside, the Rembrandts may be more engaging acoustically; the sometimes slick, ballooned-out band arrangements of last year’s Coach House appearance made some songs emotionally unapproachable.

Other first-album songs included “Burning Timber,” “Show Me Your Love” and “Someone,” which featured as lush and compelling a harmony chorus as one could ask for in the digital age. The “Untitled” songs are cut from the same ‘60s cloth, with a bit of growth and refinement. The edgy best-friends love-triangle tune, “Johnny, Have You Seen Her?” was graced with round-like vocals spiraling through its second half, while “I’ll Come Callin’ ” seemed a natural melding of ‘60s pop and Celtic folk music.

They saved “Just the Way It Is, Baby” for last, the standard place for an act’s big hit. Perhaps if they’d opened with it, though, the audience would have realized the ‘Brandts weren’t just a lounge act and would have paid them more than glancing attention while gabbing and chewing.