Pop and Jazz Reviews : Lita Ford Softens Her Gutter Rock

In her latest video, “Shot of Poison,” Lita Ford and her midriff seek to wiggle into the fantasies and pockets of as many adolescents as possible.

No surprise there. But Ford toned her act down Monday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. No crawling or writhing, no embarrassing vamping, hardly any midriff on display at all. Ford’s tights were missing a strategic patch of fabric in back, but she supplied the requisite provocativeness without pandering too blatantly.

When it came to her music, though, Ford wasn’t nearly blatant enough.

Ford, who got her start playing guitar as a teen-age glam-rocker with the Runaways, has a voice that reflects her roots: It’s suited to basic, raunchy numbers in which personality counts more than technique.

She sounded best when she kept things simple and tough, on songs like “Larger Than Life,” a show-opening ode to hard rocking and fast living, and “Rock Candy,” a heavy, sexy, slowly pounding Montrose oldie that she sang as her encore.

But most of Ford’s 70-minute set (half of it drawn from her new album, “Dangerous Curves”) forsook this earthy, bare-nails approach for a more mannered, inflated pop-metal sound colored by synthesizers. During her own guitar solos, Ford neglected guts, grit and immediacy in favor of soaring, heraldic, note-shredding sallies that sounded like 1,000 other solos.

Ford might excel at rock that resides, figuratively speaking, in the gutter or the garage. Instead she seems bent on riding to the penthouse, and is obviously willing to follow the formulas most likely to take her there.

* Ford also plays tonight at the Whisky, Thursday at Sound FX in San Diego and Saturday at the Ventura Theatre in Ventura.