EDMONTON - It's hard to put your finger on what's so great about Sam Roberts when his music resembles the same kind of happy, shiny, hippie-dippy, jingly-jangly brand of rock 'n' roll you can hear in just about any bar in North America.

All modern rock bands sound like either T-Rex or the Byrds - or a little of both. But Sam Roberts clearly has something special. The sell-out crowd at the Jubilee Auditorium last night certainly thought so.

Perhaps it is his flair for combining melody, groove and message with such elegance and focus, each facet of the song never getting in the way of another.

His opening song was a new one, Them Kids - from the new album Love At the End of the World - living up to anything he's done before, right up there with Where Have All the Good People Gone? and Bridge to Nowhere, by now a pair of Canadian rock classics. Them Kids is a fast-paced number about how the older generation always thinks the younger generation has atrocious taste in music.

If this was true, of course, popular music would keep getting worse and worse until it would all end up a bad noise.

It's not, except for that junk them kids are listening to. Good tune, in any case, and you have to love its anthemic refrain, "The kids don't know how to dance to rock 'n' roll!" To which you can only reply, who does?

Sam can be deep and fun at the same time, not an easy trick to pull off when you're a jangly guitar band that works with two chords most of them time and is distinguished by close two-part harmonies in just about everything.

One could say that he plagiarizes himself, like Jon Fogerty, but at least you know who it is when you hear it. On the heels of Them Kids came The Gate, which gave the Jube an excellent rock 'n' roll start to 2009 by blowing its roof off. And dig the line: "I was the stone and you were the stream," which has meanings you don't even want to contemplate. No time, anyway, as the third tune of the set (another new one) started with the words, "When I die, won't you please feed me to the lions of the Kalahari." See what I mean? Deep - but fun!

Sam has a romantic side, too. While Eileen failed to make an appearance by press time - Don't Walk Away, Eileen marking one of his worst hits - Roberts switched to acoustic guitar as he and his competent band pulled out Oh, Maria, a song about a lost love one can't quite let go of.

Sam is not the best singer in the world - he's no Steven Tyler - but that matters not one bit when the man is going full throttle, singing, practically shouting at the very top of his range, and beyond.

In Oh, Maria and especially Where Have All the Good People Gone, he went for it without fear, never mind the warts in what by this time had become a real rock 'n' roll show in a soft-seated theatre normally reserved for productions of Cats. Fans appreciate this sort of thing.

The gifts of songcraft, of writing lyrics with substance, of being able to perform without any artifice whatsoever, of having a scruffy charisma that appeals to hot hippie chicks - all of these things make Sam Roberts a bonafide star.

It helps that he's humble, gracious, good to the fans and at heart a Canadian boy who's not afraid to swear, talk hockey and swig a beer on stage.

I guess we have our answer.

I have a bone to pick with opening act the Stills - and with any opening act who sucks up for a standing ovation.

After two unremarkable songs, the singer issued the challenge, "we could remain nicely seated or we could tune this into a rock 'n' roll show."

He added, "Stand up! What are you afraid of?" So basically we had half the crowd standing, half of them not wanting to, and the seated half wishing those in front would sit the hell down. Awkward. Excuse me, but isn't the MUSIC alone supposed to elicit the standing-up rock 'n' roll show vibe you're looking for?

The thing is, the music of the Stills did, eventually, generally the more unconventional the song the better.

Perfect example: Snakecharming the Masses, with its awesome taiko-style drums and novel harmonic touches.

These guys were deep, too, with one song about the "end of the world," another about the "beginning of the universe."

I'd say they have their subject matter covered. It remains to be seen if they could become as great as the headliner.