POP MUSIC REVIEW : Jim Ruiz Group Blends Drollery and Dread

It might not rank with the best of Hole and Pearl Jam as an expression of ‘90s youthful angst, but you have to admit that “Who will drive my Yugo when I die?” has a certain resonance.

That refrain typifies the odd blend of drollery and dread that drives the Legendary Jim Ruiz Group, a Minneapolis band that’s low on the alternative-rock food chain, despite a current album (“Oh Brother Where Art Thou?”) full of hip musical strains and themes of pain. Club employees might have outnumbered the audience at LunaPark for the group’s show on Wednesday.

Ruiz and company (who will be at Dreams in Spaceland in Silver Lake tonight with Boston band Papas Fritas) offered a casual, sometimes slightly shaky tour of their terrain. Ruiz’s persona is that of someone a little spooked and uncertain, and at one point he wondered aloud what the drummer from his old rock band, who was in the audience, must think of him now.

Musically, Ruiz responds to fears and slights with a cheery lounge jazz, a sort of primitive form of Donald Fagen’s “Nightfly” nostalgia. Warm and lightheaded, it embodies an unattainable contentment, an easy-listening package for musings on mortality and lacerating looks at his social circles. Despite the dry detachment of the white-suited leader’s vocals, the music managed to be intimate and revealing.