Bell X1, Courtesy: Johnny Savage

SAN FRANCISCO — With Bono focusing his humanitarian efforts on Africa, we should consider ourselves lucky we have our own Irishman to help out in America.

Irish vacationers are now experiencing here the same thing that Americans were when they visited Ireland in the 1980s, said Irish rock band Bell X1 singer Paul Noonan at the band’s show at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco Wednesday. The thing they have in common is “boatloads of money.”

“We’ll spend a couple more weeks in your poor country, helping you out,” Noonan joked mid-way through Bell X1’s concert. “You’re welcome.”

That comment could have come off as arrogant, but it didn’t because Noonan also made it very clear that he and his bandmates — Dominic Philips, guitarists-pianists David Geraghty and Brian Crosby, and drummer Tim O’Donovan —were fortunate to be able to play in America.

Also, they were good. By the end of the night, they had won over many of the fans, which included indie-rock fans, Irish transplants and several from the silver-hair generation.

“It’s our first time here,” Noonan said. “This is quite a pleasant surprise.”

Good thing, since the band is already planning a return trip to the states in late May, Noonan said after the show.

Bell X1 took to the cramped cafe stage to the Darth Vader theme and opened with “Bad Skin Day,” a self-image problem themed ballad off “Flock,” an album that was released in 2005 in the U.K. but is brand new stateside.

The tune sounded like something from Coldplay, Keane or the Fray. The band’s originality began to shine with the second number, the jazzy “My Firstborn for a Song,” where Noonan, a former drummer, picked up drum sticks and banged away on a tom-tom.

The song also had a catchy Geraghty keyboard riff and was one of several that separated Bell X1 from the aforementioned bands.

Another unique song, “Alphabet Soup,” off the band’s 2003 album “Music in Mouth,” came next. With Geraghty playing the banjo, the song began as a rollicking bluegrass tune and at some point, turned rock.

Geraghty also had lead singer duties on the funk-flavored “Tongue,” also from “Music in Mouth.” It appears Bell X1 has two men capable of fronting the band.

Like Coldplay, Bell X1’s arrangements of echo-laden guitars and piano bring the lyrics into focus. The words coming out of Noonan’s mouth were easy to decipher and cleverly witty.

The best received songs of the night were three “Flock” tunes: “Rocky Took a Lover” (about a homeless man who beds a women in an alley), “Eve, the Apple of My Eye” (the song that played over an infamous kiss scene on “The O.C.” and the disco-tinged “Flame.”

On “Next to You,” another “Flock” track, he sang about Irish souvenirs “that come all the way from China.” The last song of the evening, “I’ll See Your Heart and I’ll Raise You Mine,” is “a story about how an angel and the devil got around,” Noonan said. He snuck a snippet of David Bowie’s “Heroes” into the song.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.