Third Rail Loses Some of Its Power

With its lineup of guitarist-vocalist James Blood Ulmer, bassist-producer Bill Laswell, P-Funk alumni Bernie Worrell and Jerome Brailey and gospel-rooted jazz organist Amina Claudine Myers, Third Rail is a musician cult hero dream band.

Yet the quintet’s local debut at the House of Blues on Friday showed that it’s a group designed for the players, as the 90-minute set meandered between stirring high points and aimless drifting with a rhythmic bite.

Third Rail starts from a live funk band foundation, but its funk blended old-school classicism and a progressive side, including Myers’ vocal feature “Glory Box,” a British trip-hop hit last year that strongly resembled Neneh Cherry’s European chart topper “Woman.” Most of the songs were loosely structured jams that were built around Laswell and Brailey’s heavy funk thump and that just kind of ended rather than coming to definite stops.

Ulmer’s raspy vocals made him the nominal frontman, and while the music emphasized the potent rhythmic aspects of his playing, “In the Name Of” was the only time his singular, spine-tingling shards of harmolodic guitar didn’t seem hemmed in by the funk format. There were even touches of straight rock ‘n’ roll at times, but Third Rail needs to work regularly to become more than a diverting one-off.

Opening were two groups of late-’60s rhyme-and-rhythm pioneers, the Lost Poets (a variant of the original Last Poets) and the Watts Prophets.