By Michael Mehle

WALLFLOWERS

Grade: B

When and where: Wednesday night, Fillmore Auditorium

Pay attention only to all the magazine covers, and you'd swear Jakob Dylan had turned to being a beefcake frontman, using his Hollywood looks to help muscle his band, the Wallflowers, among all the pretty boy bands at the top of the charts.

But catch them in concert, and you see and hear a whole different story.

On Wednesday, the Wallflowers took the Fillmore stage with the earnest, understated (and, yes, occasionally boring) showmanship of a band that just wants to showcase its music. It's as if the famous Dylan offspring was stepping up to the microphone to say, ``Forget the flash; our songs sell themselves.'' And, truth is, many of them do.

The first half of the band's 90-minute set was loaded with some of its best songs: thoughtful, honest outpourings that might stir the emotions but don't get the party started.

Kicking off with their current single, Sleepwalker, the Wallflowers quickly went to the heart of their new album, Breach. Some Flowers Bloom Dead was awash in organ and a sweetly melancholic message, while Hand Me Down mingled the warm tones of Michael Ward's slide guitar with a can't-miss hook.

I've Been Delivered proved to be a stunningly uplifting track that survived Dylan's endearing bumbling of the verses to work up to a big finish, while Letters From the Wasteland delivered all the appropriate bite of the spiteful lead-off track. They were all first-rate tracks that suffered only from being lumped together with only an occasional old hit (such as 6th Avenue Heartache) to warm up the audience.

About midway through the show, the Wallflowers pumped up the volume and the attitude, starting with the effective one-two punch of the new Murder 101 and the big hit, One Headlight.

Then the band got playful, sprinkling the end of its show liberally with other artists' material, starting with David Bowie's Heroes, a song the band covered for the Godzilla soundtrack. (``Our intentions were good. We just picked the wrong movie,'' Dylan said.) Later came a raucous takes of Blur's Song 2 and The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again (which Dylan jokingly said was off the Wallflower's first album) sandwiched around a soft version of Breach's sweet hidden track, Baby Bird.

Throughout the show, Dylan bantered casually and awkwardly with the crowd, trying in vain to coax a little extra emotion out of the pre-holiday audience. His bandmates kept their place on stage as though they were Krazy Glued to the floor.

Everlast's brand of hip-hop blues wasn't an ideal fit as an opening act, but he had the crowd worked up nonetheless with the funky Black Jesus and an all-over-the-map instrumental dedicated to Kid Rock's deceased sidekick, Joe C.