POP MUSIC REVIEW : Heyman: ‘60s Throwback Who’s Found His Niche : New Yorker stays true to his Beatles-Byrds roots, but he also offers enough twists of his own.

What sets Richard X. Heyman apart from the rest of the glutted neo-power-pop crowd? Hard to say.

He’s got the same bubbly Beatles ‘n’ Byrds roots as all the rest, and Thursday at Bogart’s in Long Beach, the New Yorker and his four-piece band were musically and visually a throwback to a decade ago when the Pop and the Plimsouls were playing Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Cafe. Yet there was something right about his third (or is it fourth?) generation mop-top-pop.

Call it the X factor. Heyman may not stray much from the melodies and harmonies of the ‘60s (most of his signs are pure, unadulterated rubber soul) and the DIY ethic of punk/new wave (on records he plays virtually every note himself), but he has enough twists of his own, like stepping behind the drums for a flashy Buddy Rich-ish solo in the closing number.

And he seems to have a healthy perspective in which love for the music’s spirit is held higher than the slavish adherence to the form itself. Then again, it was hard to tell if he was kidding when he started to say that his first record was released in 19 6 6 instead of 19 8 6.

Continuing in the what-year-is-this-anyway theme, the Los Angeles-based band They Eat Their Own followed the X-man with an approach that musically was pure 1981 new wave. But what makes this group distinct is the B factor: singer-songwriter Laura B.

If her delivery was a bit retro, combining the confessional tone of Romeo Void’s Debora Iyall with the melodramatics of Pat Benatar, her topics were all ‘90s--she even used the term dysfunctional in introducing one of her many songs about co-dependent relationships. Unfortunately, her lyrics tend toward the clunky: one love song rhymed call and withdrawal, while a political song paired democracy with hypocrisy.