Beyond a Gift for Synthesis, Yorn Shows Hitmaker Potential

How can a modern singer-songwriter attract attention in the current pop climate of boy/girl toys and angry young bands? Well, it helps to get a song on “Dawson’s Creek” or some similar teen-oriented soundtrack. That’s what New Jersey-to-L.A. transplant Pete Yorn has done, but standing out is about more than savvy market placement, as he demonstrated Thursday during his sold-out Roxy show.

The drummer-turned-guitarist and his backing quartet set the bar high, opening their 50-minute set with a slow snippet of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” then later encoring with the Smiths’ “Panic.” Unfortunately, these numbers proved more distinctive than selections from Yorn’s debut album, “musicforthemorningafter.”

Still, he had a lot going for him, from his scruffy good looks to his way of synthesizing numerous influences into his own thing. Also drawing on R.E.M. and the Pixies, his percussively melodic tunes were sensitive but not wimpy.

In concert, the songs proved livelier and more urgent, blending folky jangle and post-punk drone with a heartland-rock feeling, as in the harmonica-laced “Life on a Chain.” Yorn’s ruminations on love were fetchingly depressive yet romantic, underscoring the lasting effect that ‘80s college-rock heroes, while generally not the biggest hitmakers of the era, have had on the next generation of artists. Yorn hasn’t yet created such a legacy, but he’s off to a promising start.