POP MUSIC REVIEW : Screaming Trees Has No Bark : But even when vocals lapsed, instrumentation often was enough to carry the skewed mix at Coach House.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  The Pacific Northwest’s Screaming Trees have several things in common with Arizona’s Meat Puppets. Both groups recorded for the indie label SST (the Trees have since moved on to major-label status with Epic) and each are strong examples of the label’s maverick acts. Like the Puppets, the Trees have a sibling team on guitar and bass. And sonically, the Trees’ music often seems like a dense, sodden version of the Meat Puppets’ sun-crazed anthills of sound.

Although their attack wore a bit thin after half a set at the Coach House on Wednesday--guitarist Gary Lee Conner falls short of the creativity and articulation of the Puppet’s Curt Kirkwood--the quartet churns out a similarly skewed melodic/metallic mix that also draws from psychedelic-era sensibilities.

Conner may be the most frenetic large-guy guitarist since the Minutemen’s late D. Boon. A visual match to the Trees’ rampaging musicianship, Conner and his similarly rotund bassist brother, Van, caromed about the stage like renegade meatballs. Unfortunately, by comparison singer Mark Lanegan seemed like a dry bread stick, as immobile as his microphone stand and doing little to inhabit the band’s lyrics.

Lanegan has a strong, husky Jim Morrison-like voice, which on record can be alternately impassioned or affected, recalling in the latter case Cult leader Ian Astbury’s Morrisonian pretensions.

Although he did avoid that, he also usually failed to pump much life into his end of the songs. Lanegan’s features, as were those of the Conners, were largely hidden by hair hanging everywhere, but his vocals still should have shown a face.

He did connect in a few places, such as “Ivy,” the cascading vocal on “Time for Light is Over” and the strongly melodic “Nearly Lost You.” Even when the vocals lapsed, the instrumentation often was buoyant enough to carry things. The group did some of its best material, grabbing equally from the current “Sweet Oblivion” album and such indie pleasures as 1989’s “Buzz Factory.”

Lanegan was a virtual volcano of emotion compared to Luna 2 front man Dean Wareham (who formerly led Galaxie 500). Onstage Wareham looks about as engaged as someone working a bar-code scanner at Ralphs, and his impassive vocals nearly fall to the floor and curl up. But matched to his lyrics of tired hopelessness (say, there’s a novel idea!) and fronting his softer musical style, his effortless style sometimes worked.

His songs don’t cover a lot of emotional ground. With titles such as “Time to Quit” and “Goodbye” and lyric sampling such as “You know I tried to please ya, You’re under anesthesia” and “Say goodby, I can’t satisfy,” one gets the impression Wareham doesn’t wake up whistling.

His intelligent, though not especially inventive, guitar-based music--sort of like a Watchman version of Television--did have some moments. The chiming guitar riffs and vocal torpor of “Time to Quit” suggested what the Velvet Underground might have sounded as if it had been fronted by Dwight Twilley. “Slash Your Tires” successfully built some tension from the juxtaposition of Wareham’s blank vocal style and anger-laden lyrics, which were underpinned by the savage surf-beat drums of ex-Feelies member Stanley Demeski.

The local opening band, Fluf, showed a fair amount of promise, considering it was only the group’s second gig. The trio has some history behind it: Drummer Miles Gillett formerly was with El Grupo Sexo and Gherkin Raucous before returning to his native New Zealand for two years; guitarist O (Otis Barthoulameu) and bassist Johnny Donhowe were in Olivelawn. As do the headliners, the group dabbles in melodiousness, although O’s fuzztone-from-hell sonic attack buries much of the group’s effort along those lines. Bassist Donhowe kept up a busy, propulsive bottom end, while Gillett provided a strong framework with drumming that recalled Zep’s John Bonham a bit in its ability to take a slightly off-kilter rhythm and make it swing. Given time, this could be a group to watch.