The Gunga Din comprises some of the last surviving practitioners of what has been, for the last six or seven years, the defining sound of the Lower East Side-- a raunchy combination of blues, psychedelia and garage-rock most prominently found in now-defunct 60's-influenced garage-roots and greaser-rock bands like Jonathan Fire*Eater, the Devil Dogs, Emma Peel, Spitball, and the Chrome Cranks. Oh, and I guess for posterity's sake, I'll go ahead and mention the word "noir" now, since no Gunga Din review would be quite complete without it.

The Gunga Din's instrumental approach is simple and loose, driven by the reverb-splashed Jazzmaster leads of former Body Lovers guitarist Bill Bronson. Bronson's somewhat versatile playing ranges from a menacing sleaze-tone to a clean, icy shimmer. Androgyne extraordinaire and sometime Stereo Total member Maria Zastrow's essential Farfisa makes the perfect companion to Bronson's guitar. It sneaks around the verses under two main guises: a rich Hammond organ tone and squealing, spidery lines that evoke trashy 60's go-go parties and camp psychedelia at every turn. The first cut on the album, "Brave New World," embodies all the band's strengths like no other song on the album: Siobhan Duffy's vocal lines have a keen rhythmic bounce to them; Bronson accompanies with spare guitar arpeggios, wailing slide, and economic single-note passages. Zastrow's keyboard work comes in punchy ejaculations during the verses and stretches out under the chorus. The parts are perfectly interlocked and tightly arranged.

And it's true, the Gunga Din really are cooler than you. In fact, they push things beyond mere cool into some sort of attitudinal deep-freeze. But that doesn't mean it's difficult to enjoy them. Their lyrics do suggest a kind of jaded, elitist coffee-house cosmopolitanism-- and, there is a certain trite, romanticized melancholy pervading the songs. One discerns general themes like distrust between men and women, lost innocence, and sexual dysfunction, along with some hazy, non-specific states of mental anguish. And of course, the lyrics smack of mild hipster poeticism. But ultimately, the songwriting is too non-confrontational and oblique, fraught with not-confessional-enough confessional lyrics. Then again, the band probably meant to do that.

Because I'm an obsessive schmuck when it comes to rock lyrics, I'll invite you my Lyricist's Lounge to smoke a few clove cigarettes while we sample and analyze a few examples of the kind of writing we're dealing with here. Note the too-lazy-to-slash-my-wrists sentiments of a line like, "It's one of those days/ I'm jumping out of my skin again/ And everyone is too loud/ And I'm coming down off of nothing," from "Mama." There's also the straightforwardly grim hopelessness of "Under the Sun:" "All smiles will leave us empty/ With nowhere to go but down."

Bill Bronson, in his own composition, "In the Garden," performs a miraculous feat of verbal acrobatics-- he manages to rhyme "garden" with "rhododendron." And unlike the "crowd" in Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," who dance like "hypnotized chickens," Siobhan Duffy insists that they "flit and flutter/ Like filthy fowls with broken necks." I blame this writing style not so much on singer/lyricist Duffy, but squarely on the too-recent addition of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton to college English reading-lists everywhere.

Truthfully, though, the real delight is seeing the Gunga Din live, an experience for which there's really no substitute. I enjoy shamelessly ogling sultry, world-weary ice princess Duffy. She'll have you on your knees begging for more of her sublime detachment, agonizing aloofness, and still more of her sexually-charged ambivalence. She's about as sexy an emotionally-stripped voidoid as Greta Garbo, and the pleasures of her voice are equally undeniable. Duffy possesses the sort of velvet-lined pipes you may have heard the likes of before (Cat Power's Chan Marshall, to a certain extent) but can't quite place. You get lost in her hypnotic, droning sonority and soon forget any pretentiousness associated with the syllables sliding off her tongue.

There are plenty of critics who insist on pooh-poohing the obvious 60's-referencing of the Gunga Din. And sure, it's no secret where the band's primary influences lie; but 60's pilfering doesn't automatically make for uninteresting listening. I mean, what the fuck do you want, people? These days, it's either 60's referencing or Lenny Kravitz covering the Guess Who. All your faves have built their careers on robbing the 60's: Pavement, Matthew Sweet, the Lily's, the Flaming Lips, Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples in Stereo and the list goes on. Hell, if we got rid off all the rock bands ripping off the 60's today, there'd be few people left.

-Michael Sandlin