Wilson explores pop, blues in a typically atypical show

Cassandra Wilson’s music inhabits a dark, often intriguing world. Filled with chattering percussion, wispy tendrils of banjo and harmonica and roiling waves of turbulent bass, it is the perfect environment for her molasses-toned vocal adventuring.

Her performance Monday at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where she appeared on an atmospherically lighted stage surrounded by a quintet, displayed both the fascinations and the limitations of that environment. Wilson’s continuing flirtation with pop and blues songs -- fully apparent in her current album, “Glamoured” -- resulted in typically unusual renderings of tunes ranging from the Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville” and Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” to Sting’s “Fragile” and Willie Nelson’s “Crazy.”

Moving to different areas, she was on particularly firm ground with an earthy version of Muddy Waters’ “Honey Bee” but less effective with an almost unrecognizable take on the English-language version of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Aquas de Marco.”

Prior to Wilson’s dramatic shift a decade ago when she expanded her repertoire, her jazz credentials were impeccable, verifiable in both mainstream and envelope-stretching styles. Although her pop explorations always flow with a subtext of jazz, there were only a few moments in her Royce program in which she set aside her suspended phrases in favor of a more urgent rhythmic propulsion -- most notably in a romp through “Them There Eyes” that was enhanced by the firecracker drumming of Terri Lyne Carrington.

Wilson’s most compelling asset has been her insistence on exploring her own pathways, wherever they may lead, and as with Betty Carter -- clearly one of her inspirations -- the results can be unpredictable and uneven. But they also can cast new light on an art that poses the thorny problem of combining music, lyrics, interpretation and rhythm into a single, potentially imbalanced, entity.

The more flaccid moments in her set indicated that Wilson still hasn’t fully solved that problem. But the passages in which all her talents came into sync revealed how important it was for her to reach for solutions in her own inimitable way.