Pop Music : Heart Throbs’ Show a Murmur

“You better wake up,” Rose Carlotti, lead singer for the English band the Heart Throbs, told the audience Saturday night at Bogart’s in Long Beach. “You’re sending us to sleep.”

But Carlotti had it backwards. It’s the band’s job to keep the crowd alert, not the other way around. And the quintet, despite the exhilaration of a recent debut album, “Cleopatra Grip,” wasn’t up to the task. That’s backwards, too. Rock is supposed to be better live than on record: more free-wheeling, full of tension and force.

But like the Primitives and the Sundays (both also female-fronted) before them, the Heart Throbs have come over from England behind exciting, distinctive recordings only to come up short in concert. At least the band has a few good songs and the potential to cause palpitations.

That’s more than can be said for the Railway Children, who opened the show. The four-piece band is a perfect example of faceless British rock: well-meaning, even tuneful, but sparkless and unimaginative. The groups continue their tour tonight at the Roxy, where the Children headline.