Sharper focus from pared-down Lambchop

Kurt Wagner has never been easy to put a finger on. Although Wagner and his band, Lambchop, were lumped in with the alternative-country movement, the designation had more to do with his hometown of Nashville than their core musical influences, which mix the lyrical complexity of folk rock with the sprawling orchestration of 1970s soul.

Wagner took the stage of Johnny Brenda's on Friday night in a feed cap and work shirt - the spitting image of a good ol' boy, notwithstanding his black, square-frame glasses. But as he sat center stage with a 1920s Gibson guitar in his lap and a two-olive martini on a nearby amplifier, Wagner seemed more like a Southern novelist than a honky-tonk hooter.

On "Slipped Dissolved and Loosed," from the band's latest album, OH (ohio), he evoked the indeterminate twilight hours where a lover's intentions come into focus and then slip away, his clipped croak barely rising above the band's pulsating swell.

Early on, Lambchop was a sprawling, mercurial collective, sometimes numbering more than two dozen primary and auxiliary members. But in recent years, Wagner has pared down his sound, focusing on a core of pianist Tony Crow and guitarist William Tyler. The band's current incarnation is a relatively compact seven musicians, including Wagner.

Paring down Lambchop's lineup also has focused its sound, although some songs still sounded like a collection of motifs in search of an overarching structure. Built around a rapid, descending guitar riff, "Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr.," threatened to dissolve into a fog of frilly noodling, with Crow's right-hand flourishes the primary offender.

But more often, the pieces fell synchronously into place, creating a kind of understated exuberance, a subterranean crescendo that suddenly burst into glorious Technicolor.

Wagner got to his feet only briefly, during an extended coda to the shape-shifting "Popeye," which incorporated an impromptu snatch of the Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime." But simply by pitching forward far enough to take leave of his seat, Wagner sent an electric crackle through the room. He'd stayed still long enough to make mere movement seem like a revelation.