So sue me — I was never a Mission of Burma fan. I liked "That’s When I Reach for My Revolver" and "Academy Fight Song" and not much else, and I could only barely make out how Burma might have been crucial in some abstract historical sense. Since it was often said that the evidence attesting to their importance was absent from their albums, why bore yourself to death listening? I was 10 years old at their last show; to me, Peter Prescott is that cranky old guy from Kustomized and the Peer Group, and Roger Miller is one of those hinky improv beatniks, and the other one — well, apparently he’d left the business and got a real job. Burma’s certain fate — obtuse cult heroes who never got a proper hearing — seemed to have been sealed by their chapter-length appearance in Michael Azerrad’s reverential Our Band Could Be Your Life: bring on the honorary diplomas.

Last Friday night at Avalon, a funny thing happened on Mission of Burma’s way to the museum: turns out they’re only, oh, the most contemporary rock-and-roll band not to have played a gig in 15 years. I bet Prescott still tells people that if they like only "Revolver" and "Academy," then they would’ve hated Mission of Burma, but don’t believe him for a second. Hell, the tune I was humming on my way home from Avalon was "That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate." But the show was not just a reminder that Mission of Burma wrote some great songs a couple decades ago — it felt like a reinvention. Or at least it was audible proof that their genius truly didn’t make it to their albums. It was as if a black-and-white photo were suddenly seen in color. Every other song seemed to be a blueprint for a band whose lineage you thought you knew — but as you come to Burma now, in the 21st century, the band seem both to echo and to presage the modern musical world. You could imagine "Fun World" as the echo that launched the jackhammer stammer and scrape of Jesus Lizard and Shellac and Mule. Even without Thurston Moore sitting in — Gang of Four drummer Hugo Burnham joined instead — the epic, wide-stroke landscape of "All World Cowboy Romance" conjured the majestic wash of Sonic Youth’s "The Diamond Sea." "Peking Spring" and "Trem Two" hinted at the impressionistic architecture lectures of Fugazi and Joan of Arc; the hits played punk-as-pop-as-literature anthemicism à la Jawbreaker.

Listening to the opening "Secrets" and "Fame and Fortune" was a lesson in collectivity, the kind of thing Gang of Four preached more than they practiced. The song’s lyric passed from mouth to mouth — the verses weren’t traded but passed in the middle, as if one member had run out of things to say and someone else had to step in to complete the thought. There were as many æsthetic strategies as there were songs: "Mica" expounding on nothing more than a staccato, off-kilter drumbeat; "The Ballad of Johnny Burma" slicing and dicing Link Wray’s "Rumble" into a cut-and-paste collage of half-remembered signifiers; Prescott’s "Learn How" as a case study in unmediated inarticulation ending in dog barks. I’ve never seen anyone come unglued as convincingly as Burma on "Max Ernst" and "Dirt" — you’d swear they’d completely lost the thread. And then suddenly they’re together again, but somewhere else.

That’s Burma for you: the loose ends they unraveled in the fabric of post-punk have yet to be tied up. And there they were, still tying themselves in unsolvable knots. If the world is only just now catching up to Mission of Burma, they didn’t look as if they were about to stand idly by and watch the world pass. What I thought I saw last weekend at Avalon was not the just the historical beginnings of my favorite strain of art punk but an end unto itself. I suppose that’s how Burma escaped their certain fate.