***1/2 Magic Dirt

FRIENDS IN DANGER

(Warner Bros.)

There's a harrowingly tense moment roughly halfway through the final track ("I Was Cruel") on Magic Dirt's major-label debut: with two liquidy low-end guitars churning on the verge of feedback, and the drummer poised to crash down hard over the whole beautiful mess, singer/guitarist Adalita Srsen growls out the line "When you stick the knife in." It's not clear where she's headed with that thought until a muscular backbeat kicks in, those scuzz-guitars zero in on a monstrous, two-chord riff, and Srsen starts milking the phrase "stick it in" for all it's worth.

This is as good and as purely cathartic as art-damaged, noise-mongering, amp-frying rawk gets. It's heavy without the turgid metal, avant without any guarded cool, even though this Australia foursome's roots are planted firmly in the dirty asphalt staked out by the in-crowd of outsiders like Sonic Youth, Live Skull, and Pussy Galore. There are also some Seattle grunge overtones to the band's corrosive rumble-and-wah-wah-driven guitar assault, but not enough to conjure images of flannel shirts. When Srsen wraps her raw throat around the acid-prose of "I Was Cruel," the equally squalling "Friends of Danger," or even the more wistful, laid-back refrains of "Bodysnatcher," Magic Dirt bring to mind what Live Skull fronted by Come's Thalia Zedek might have sounded like if they'd written some catchier tunes.

-- Matt Ashare

(Magic Dirt open for Yatsura and the Wedding Present this Friday, November 29, downstairs at the Middle East.)