Crowe and Mates Just Want to Have Freewheeling Fun

What’s left to challenge Russell Crowe, the reluctant sex symbol who won the best actor Academy Award this year for his performance in “Gladiator”? Well, there’s always rock ‘n’ roll.

On Sunday at the House of Blues, the New Zealand native, 37, and his band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, offered the capacity crowd 90 freewheeling minutes of original blues-and folk-flavored rock from their current album, “Bastard Life or Clarity” (due in the U.S. on Sept. 18 from Artemis Records) and earlier Australian releases.

Joining the ranks of actors such as Kevin Bacon and Dennis Quaid --who, forget about directing, really wanna rock --singer and lyricist Crowe mixed character studies and drawn-from-experience vignettes that probably won’t win any Grammy Awards but were hardly embarrassing.

Indeed, the recurring theme of romantic frustration, as exorcised in such yearning-from-afar numbers as “Somebody Else’s Princess,” contrasted nicely with the popular view of Crowe as a throwback to filmdom’s reserved-yet-untamed manly men of yore.

The longtime Australia resident--whose 6-year-old band predates his movie stardom--prefers his ranch to Hollywood’s beautiful people.

Even his group’s name is at once movie-insiderish, absurdly random and vaguely macho: a script notation about the amount of combative noise, measured in feet, needed for overdubbing a fight scene: 30 odd foot of grunts.

Often playing guitar and displaying a serviceable but not terribly distinctive voice, Crowe was pointedly low-key in jeans and an untucked black shirt. Clearly enjoying his onstage romp with writing partner and lead guitarist Dean Cochran, bassist Garth Adam, drummer Dave Kelly, trumpeter Stewart Kirwan and guitarist Dave Wilkins, he mugged just a little, at one point joking, “The lead singer’s a cutie” with a screams-inducing head-tilt.

Somewhat Springsteen-esque, the music was casually rendered, with variations including boogies, mid-tempo ballads, near-grunge and a loose take on Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Although standouts ranged from the rollicking stomper “What You Want Me to Forget?” to the melancholy single-mom portrait “Wendy,” the overall impression was of a decent bar band with honest, better-than-average tunes.

Would it have an American record deal if Crowe weren’t a movie star? Probably not. But, hey, that’s Hollywood.