Year of the Rabbit

Avey Tare & Panda Bear, Ogurusu Norihide, Hair Police and Mystic Dub Star

Thursday · Plush

Avey Tare & Panda Bear are key members of the Brooklyn-based experimentalist co-op, The Animal Collective, whose members (Deaken and Geologist are also dues-payers in the group) pride themselves on defying genrists and easy comparisons, working most often with the tools of the Electronic music trade, but by no means limited to them. While samples play a part, AT & PB aren't shackled to modern technology, often utilizing a guitar/bass/drums foundation and adopting an approach that is frequently more in line with a Punk or Rock mindset. All of those elements mingle with a modern Post Rock and vintage Prog avant-gardeness, creating an intriguing counterbalance of stretched ambience and brisk aggressiveness. The collective's boundlessly creative sonics have most recently been exhibited on Here Comes the Indian, the AC's first release on their new vanity imprint, Paw Tracks Records, distributed through Carpark Records. Look for AT & PB's earlier releases, Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished and the head-spinning Danse Manatee, this fall, when they are reissued by Britain's Fatcat label. (Mike Breen)

The Ankles with The Sweet Impala

Friday · The Comet

The word "drunken" pops up several times in the press propaganda for Jersey City's The Ankles. But, while there are certainly moments of sloshy swagger on the group's recent release, Kill Themselves (on Hoboken indie Maggadee Records), the down mood and songs of regret, bitterness and indignation seem to be more befitting a "morning after" descriptor. The Ankles secrete the languid, unkempt Indie Rock indolence on which Pavement built their house of slack, but a punchy, assertive rhythm section, intermittent chiming keyboard sprinkles and burly, sometimes dissonant guitar keeps the listener from questioning their effort and breaking out the smelling salts. This is energetic stuff that is actually quite similar in tone to early Afghan Whigs, with its sheets of ragged sound and, especially, in singer/guitarist Shawn Towey occasionally tone-challenged vocal bleeding. Like the Whigs' Greg Dulli, the note-reaching is often so endearingly expressive and soulful that it's forgivable and appropriate. The dual guitar interplay makes Kill Themselves a keeper -- Towey and Fred MaCaraeg's six-string sparring on songs like "Temper Temper" and the fantastic "Sparkling &" creates an engulfing glaze. Album closer "The Little Dinosaurs" finds the band at its most expansive and just happens to be the disc's finest cut; the escalating dynamic between the watery verses and burrowing chorus has an irresistibly fluid effectiveness. Kill Themselves isn't an album for listeners looking for pure note-perfect exactness, but those who appreciate Guitar Rock that's a little manic and tattered around the edges will find it passionate and engaging. (MB)

Scissorfight

Saturday · Sudsy Malone's

It's remarkably invigorating to see a new breed stripping some of the occasionally heinous artifice of Metal, reveling in the music's best aspects and reclaiming it at its Hard Rock roots. Heading up the underground railroad for these nihilistic mutineers is New Hampshire's Scissorfight, Hard Rock desperados who have built a drop-jawed following with their intense, often violent live shows and an equally blistering portfolio of indie recordings. Like Nashville Pussy, Scissorfight take the bottom-heavy rumble of Motörhead's more thumping moments and bitch-slap it with a Southern Rock-ish boogie of raw, hemorrhaging riffage. The results, viciously exhibited on the band's most recent effort, 2002's EP Potential New Agent For Unconventional Warfare, are thunderous and disorienting. It's like it's 1977 and frenzied Punk monsters The Dwarves have hijacked that doomed Lynyrd Skynyrd flight and steered them into reckless musical decadence instead of a rural Mississippi hillside. (MB)

Year of the Rabbit with Anonymous Bosch and Cardia

Cardia

Tuesday · 20th Century Theater

With the well-regarded Failure, guitarist Ken Andrews created an atmospheric and immediate Hard Rock wall of indie sound. With his new and essentially solo project, Year of the Rabbit, Andrews updates and streamlines his previous accomplishments into an equally impressive sonic wash of swelling guitar Rock. With the passion of Prog and the dour intensity of Emo, YOTR powerfully accesses a sound that triangulates a position between Pearl Jam and the Psychedelic Furs and any one of a dozen contemporary bands that attempt this kind of melodic Hard Rock riffery without the benefit of good songs or a subtle sense of complexity. Andrews invests YOTR with all of that and more, as he churns through a maelstrom of concussive guitar Rock that runs the gamut from visceral Pop dirges ("Let It Go," "Lie Down") to thumping Rock anthemics ("Rabbit Hole") to shimmering shards of Proggy invention ("Vaporize"). Between Failure and Year of the Rabbit, Ken Andrews has proven his innate ability to blend the beauty of noise with the power of melody. (Brian Baker)

· With Andrews' proclivity for efficient songwriting painted over a smartly produced and masterfully constructed backdrop, YOTR's bill-mates at this show couldn't have been better selected. Alongside like-minded local greats Anonymous Bosch, NYC's Cardia mines a spacious cavern of soulful Guitar Pop with textural depth and high-ceilinged melodicism. The ghost of Jeff Buckley has inhabited perhaps one too many Modern Rock singers these days (though it's certainly a more appetizing trend than, say, the Post Grunge knock-offs), but Cardia singer/guitarist Ian Love usually reels in the histrionics. Love more often than not soars without the "look-how-high-I-can-sing" bravado, and his vocal approach is only occasionally distracting, saved by the potent songwriting. Fans of Buckley-ites Muse and Ours will want to warp their ears around Cardia's self-produced, self-titled debut, which twinkles with a radiant guitar glimmer and suave intimacy, but also has a subtle toughness that helps set them apart from many of their contemporaries. The band contains former members of Rival Schools, Shudder to Think and The Verve Pipe, and while an understanding of their past doesn't give you a precise definition of Cardia's sound, it puts you so close enough to the ballpark, you can smell the hot dogs. (MB)

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