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Fly me to the Mooney
The Mooney Suzuki in Northampton, plus D.O.A. and more
BY CARLY CARIOLI

New York garage-rock fiends Mooney Suzuki pulled a Liz Phair–sized shocker for their major-label debut, Alive and Amplified (Columbia, due in August), tapping the Matrix for production duties. (Don’t those guys write for pop singers anymore?) It’s the oddest pairing yet for the LA hitmaking team, but Alive’s title track is a monster: big loping "Sympathy for the Devil" conga beat, rising church chorus shrieking soulfully in the middle distance, X-Tina-worthy vocal hook up front, and, right smack in the middle, what will probably be the dirtiest guitar solo to make pop radio in 30 years. Other surprises include "New York Girls" — imagine a hybrid of Elton’s "Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting," Bowie’s "Suffragette City," and the Go’s "Get You Off" — and "Messin’ in the Dressing Room," which sounds like Kiss transported to Electric Ladyland. If you can’t wait till August, the Mooneys will be trying out some new tracks at Pearl Street (413-584-0610) in Northampton on Saturday.

The outspoken elder statesman of Canadian punk, Joey "Shithead" Keithly, is credited with introducing the genre’s ubiquitous adjective — hardcore — to the lexicon; but now he’s flexing some more rhetorical muscle with a new memoir, I, Shithead: A Life in Punk (Arsenal Pulp), that recounts his adventures as a Vancouver compatriot of Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra. He’ll have copies when his well-worn D.O.A., entering their 26th year, take to the road behind a best-of disc, War and Peace (on Keithly’s Sudden Death Records). They’re at the Webster Theater (860-525-5553) in Hartford tonight (May 13) and at Doc Ryan’s Pub (978-745-8927) in Salem on Friday with LA’s all-time goofiest punk band, the Dickies.

The Iraqi WMDs, as the local indie-rap supergroup the Perceptionists pointed out on stage a couple of weeks ago, are still missing in action. But not hip-hop’s. The "Weapons of Mic Destruction Tour" brings a pair of NYC’s overlooked ’90s faves — hardcore devotees M.O.P. and Organized Konfusion’s Pharoahe Monch — together for dates tonight at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge; Friday at Pearl Street; and Saturday at Toad’s Place (203-562-5589) in New Haven. Meanwhile, there’s more lyrical artillery in store at the annual "Mic Wars" battle-rhyme competition at Lupo’s at the Strand (401-831-4071) in Providence on Wednesday.

Like Jason Molina’s Songs: Ohia, Will Shelff’s Okkervil River began as a stark, deep-in-the-pines indie-folk group with a creaky debt to Will Oldham but have graduated into a first-rate chamber-pop/emobilly ensemble. Shelff and keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg are pulling double duty this time out; their other band, Shearwater, are touring as the opening act behind a splendid new disc, Winged Life (Misra), which fleshes out Okkervillian roots with lusher, more modernist arrangements — even as, on one song at least, the singer professes to be smoking pot and listening to Slayer. Both bands are at the Space (207-828-5600) in Portland on Sunday and the Middle East on Monday.


Issue Date: May 14 - 20, 2004
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