If the Strokes had taken White Light/White Heat off the stereo for just a minute and put on a couple of Buzzcocks albums and maybe a Superchunk seven-inch or three, they might’ve come up with something as lifesaving as the Thermals’ More Parts per Million (Sub Pop), an indie-punk album that recalls the glory years of the early-’90s underground — no-fi recording techniques and all. This band’s in-the-red, four-track-overloading speaker buzz makes More Parts per Million one of the more beautifully cruddy discs to come down the pike since the heyday of the Young Fresh Fellows’ Cruddy Records label, and it just might be the album to put Sub Pop back on the map. On Saturday, the Thermals are at Flywheel (413-527-9800) in Northampton with King of France, a guitar-piano-drums trio whose line-up includes former Rolling Stone rock scribe Michael Azerrad — the guy who penned Come As You Are, the best book on Nirvana written while Kurt Cobain was still alive. You can also catch King of France in Boston tonight (March 27) at the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes (617-524-3740) with Suntan and Pagoda Red. And the Thermals show up at T.T. the Bear’s Place (617-492-BEAR) in Cambridge on Sunday.

If you didn’t know better about Ted Leo, you’d follow your instincts — the football jerseys, the Jam/Costello smartness, the occasional neo-Celtic twinge, an endearing nostalgia for rude-boy culture — and assume he was some British hooligan fresh out of the pub. Even if you know that Leo’s a veteran of the brilliant, Mod-ish DC emo band Chisel and has been making his way to brilliance with a stack of solo discs, his new Hearts of Oak may throw you. It’s his finest hour thus far: sweaty, hyper-articulate, politically astute, laceratingly self-aware, and raggedly anthemic in a manner that keeps eliciting Dexy’s Midnight Runners comparisons. For local color, check the Red Line references in " Bridges, Squares " ; for topicality, note how " The High Party " lyricizes the new war as a bitter draft. On tour with his backing band, RX/Pharmacists, he’s at the Living Room (401-521-5200) in Providence tonight (March 27) and at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on Friday.

It’s another emo lost weekend at the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester. Upstarts Taking Back Sunday and From Autumn to Ashes play tonight (March 27). And we really hope that singer dude from Simple Plan has lost the wack Morrissey haircut from their " I’d Do Anything " video by the time they arrive on Saturday with Diffuser and Arista’s latest Canadian mall-punks, Gob.

From the where-are-they-now file: Dutch college-rock stars Bettie Serveert return to mid-’90s form with a new album, Log 22 (Hidden Agenda), and a tour that hits T.T. the Bear’s on Saturday and the Iron Horse (413-584-0610) in Northampton on Sunday. And Concrete Blonde pimp a new live-in-Berlin concert album with dates at the Webster Theatre (860-525-5553) in Hartford on Monday and the Roxy (617-931-2000) in Boston on Tuesday.

Issue Date: March 27 - April 3, 2003
Back to the Music table of contents.