Chris Whitley Reveals A Darker Shade Of Blues

----------------------------------------------------------------- Concert review

Chris Whitley, Tuesday night, O.K. Hotel; Whitley performs again tonight, with Harlot; $9, 628-0888. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Whitley has a salamander stare and the posture of a coiled diamondback.

Though somewhat slight, he is all muscle, veins and sinew. His songs once were cleverly chorded but simply stated rural-based blues, played on a battered steel-plated dobro. But they have metamorphosed, along with his band, into a mostly electric, three-piece maelstrom of agony, anger and anguish.

Tuesday night Whitley presented a large portion of his new release, "Din of Ecstasy," to a sizable audience that seemed at first puzzled by the new Whitley formation but was systematically won over by one powerhouse song after another.

You gather from Whitley's lyrics that he's known some real down times, or at least brushed hard up against them. "Some Candy Talking" is a downward dive into a drug den where Whitley talks to the filth. "Narcotic Prayer" looks at spiritual and physical death.

Even the somewhat lighter moments, like "Ultraglide," still maintain a dark side. If there's a big laugh in Whitley, it has yet to show in a song.

Intense performance

Whitley is something of a subdued singer, his range isn't real wide and the low notes sometimes get lost in the mix.

But he makes a point of getting the words across, no matter how intense the playing becomes, and that is often overwhelming. Mixing open tunings with slide attacks, fat-bottom chording and viper-tongued, single-note lines, Whitley's playing propels the emotion of his lyrics.

At times the sound is so cumulous it almost suggests the fattened playing of Robin Trower, but without Trower's mythic conceit.

This remains bog music told in trailer park parlance. Whitley's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse drive beaten GMC pickups, shoot dope and squander their lives. No glamour, no redemption.

And all done as economically as Whitley treats his cigarettes, tossed on the stage half done in the middle of a lead, picked up, re-lit and finished when the song is over. No wasted movements, only wasted lives.

Connects with the crowd

But there is still something oddly and truly compelling about Whitley. It isn't his stage patter - he has practically none, other than to slightly admonish the audience for seeming to prefer at first his occasional foray into the solo acoustic number as opposed to the predominately electric hour-plus set.

It isn't the joy he shares, there's none of that either. And it isn't the immediate accessibility of his material.

Even though he's putting the words on a platter, you have to listen, you have to feel, you have to involve yourself. Whitley presents his world with his powerful plying and how hard or long you embrace it is personal.

But by the end of Tuesday night's performance, the O.K. crowd was enthusiastically on Whitley's side, at least enough to conjure a snake smile out of him.

Rich Mercurio's clean, dynamic drumming and Alan Gevaert's full bass were a perfect complement. There are times when Whitley's music seemed to be becoming as unwound as the characters within, like exploding golf balls, elastic shrapnel about to fly everywhere. But it never happened. The trio always simultaneously tied the loose, vibrating ends.

It was the sign of a band that's spent time together, that knows one another. There was a sense of disjointed unity that, despite itself, worked.

Opening for Whitley Tuesday was Seattle's deflowers who, by contrast, put on an attractive, perky set of melodic, enjoyable pop 'n' rock.