.Meekest Frontman: There’s something undeniably seductive about this much earnestness

While Berkeley singer-songwriter Bart Davenport flicks at his guitar, he purrs words that, as he puts it in one of his more cloying numbers, drip “from the lips of life like drops of wine on your tongue.” Although Davenport flirts from genre to genre, his studiously earnest, Jonathan Richman vibe remains constant. Jaded hipsters find his silly love song shtick playfully ironic — that is, until midway through the set, when it dawns on them that Davenport is dead serious about love, hope, and zest. His old bands the Loved Ones and the Kinetics may be a-moulderin’ in the grave, but as a solo artist, Bart’s soul goes marching on.