Your Average Guy Band, Times 3

“We’re not curing cancer,” Matchbox Twenty lead singer Rob Thomas said at the sold-out Universal Amphitheatre on Thursday. “We’re just five guys in a band who have some songs to play for you.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This humble-average-guy routine has helped Thomas and his bandmates sell many millions of copies of last year’s “Mad Season” and their 1996 debut, “Yourself or Someone Like You.” Indeed, they flaunt their ordinary-guyness as if it were some sort of political cause.

“Mediocrity rocks!” might be the slogan, and on Thursday it certainly did, as the Florida-bred Matchbox expertly swung through hits and favorites from both collections.

Indeed, the we’re-just-folks theme dominated this evening of modern rock, which also featured young L.A. up-and-comers Lifehouse and Portland, Ore.-based veterans Everclear. If this tactic didn’t always make for memorable music, the enthusiastic reaction to all three acts proved that no matter how many prefab dance troupes masquerading as bands clog the charts, listeners will always embrace groups that examine the human condition in excruciating emotional detail and with smoothly executed passive-aggressive sonic drama.

These are the songs of the sensitive young man who wants to share his travails and triumphs. Maybe he’s suffering after his parents’ divorce, an experience 20-year-old Lifehouse singer-guitarist Jason Wade drew on for the swirling “Sick Cycle Carousel.” Or celebrating his daughter’s innocence, as Everclear’s Art Alexakis did in the banjo-driven ditty “Song From an American Movie, Pt. 1.” Or recognizing a kindred broken spirit, a la Thomas in Matchbox’s lover’s plea “Bent.”

For all the sturm und drang in Matchbox’s blend of melodic rock, post-punk thrash, folky rattle and R&B; touches (occasionally provided by three horn/reed players), the tunes were never about lashing out in frustration like Marilyn Manson or Limp Bizkit.

Such selections as the pulsating rocker “Crutch” and the hip-hop-driven “Mad Season” were about reaching out--in a vaguely rebellious, kinda angry, sorta alienated way. Rather than asserting “the world is somehow to blame for my unhappiness,” Matchbox proclaims: “I am somehow to blame for my own misery, even when it’s someone else’s fault.”

Lifehouse set the proper mood with an opening half-hour of ringing, folk-flavored pop-rock brimming with the sincerity and callow confusion that go over big with viewers of such teen-oriented dramas as “Roswell,” which featured the band’s heartfelt ballad “Everything.”

Other selections from the quartet’s debut album, “No Name Face,” explored the heady emotions of someone on the brink of adulthood, aching for love in the modern-rock hit “Hanging by a Moment” and asserting his individuality in the pounding, wah-wah-guitar-spiked “Quasimodo.” Yet despite being true to itself and quite musically adept, the group left little more impression than its more disposable teen-pop peers.

Thankfully, Everclear turned seriousness on its head with a cathartic and distinctive 45 minutes of often rollicking, buzzing rock mixed with folk and hip-hop flavors. Introducing the delightfully punk-a-go-go “Rock Star,” Alexakis rambled on about how (you guessed it) he’s a regular guy, then brought a bunch of fans on stage to be the “Everclear Dancers.”

As goofy as that moment was, it showed Everclear was comfortable with a broader emotional palette than the other two acts. Most important, Alexakis delivered his songs with no sweeping flourishes, but rather the simple conviction of a man who knows how to convey feelings without sounding glib.

It was a lesson Thomas should take to heart. Even when given a sublimely ridiculous situation--the true story behind “Rest Stop,” in which a girl ended her relationship with Thomas by kicking him out of her car in the middle of nowhere--he turned it into a leaden exercise in self-flagellation.

Frankly, if you weren’t among the overwhelming majority of listeners who could, like, totally relate to what Matchbox was saying, the generally humorless earnestness of it all became somewhat hard to take.