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Tonight, week 3 of the Valhalla Kittens' Abbey residency, Peter Moore is presenting, for the first time ever, an odd song cycle/concept piece. It's an account of the rise and fall of Charlie's relationship with Jeanine, told in a series of clever, soulful songs for piano, vox, and kick drum with spoken interludes relating phone calls between Charlie and Jeanine or Boris, Charlie's crusty Russian friend. Peter is the mad genius of Boston rock, and this project really showcases his theatrical singing and ridiculous profusion of personae. His Jeanine is truly disturbing.
Mascara are up next, and my expectations are low: I hated Chris Mascara's heavy schtick a year ago and haven't seen them since. I'm very pleased with the change in the intervening time. He's mostly dropped the endless, mimey gestures and fluorishes in favor of concentrating on playing the guitar, and his playing and songwriting are much better for it. The rhythm section are solid and the bassist sings able backup. Unfortunately, Chris's singing has deteriorated, or he's having a really off night; instead of a strong, clear voice with excellent control, we get weak and raspy and poor pitch. I hope it's just an off night. If they can put it all together, they'll be really good.
Valhalla Kittens are having a great night. As usual, the girls are mixed WAY too low on the first song, but they soon get that sorted, and the mix gets very good indeed. (Or else my new earplugs are really that much better.) The setlist is much like two weeks ago, with a heavy emphasis on crowd-pleasing, theatrical numbers. (It's that kind of night.) For me, it's all about the way Kitten Violet says "Didn't!" A highlight of the set is "Jet Age Man," as the non-unison vocals make it possible to hear the individual girls' voices a bit more. Kitten Violet's rich, whiskey/caramel-gorgeous contralto is normally hard to pick out from the mix. (Kitten Pearl's soaring high end is easily picked out from any mix involving primarily human voices.) Oh, and they reprise the fabulous sequined gowns from New Year's, which Kitten Violet apparently SEWED HERSELF! This in addition to creating the gorgeous flyer; is there nothing that girl can't do?
Headliners Voodoo Screw Machine frighten me. The fog machine starts up before the curtain even opens, and when it does open it reveals a stageful of mangled mannequins and a band fronted by a partially mummified skinhead in heavy horror makeup. They launch into a fairly hilarious set of Satan-worshipping, fake-blood-spewing camp-metal. The line "Suck the big black dick of Satan!" gets my attention, but I don't think there's anything I can add to that. The band are really tight, especially the string players, and the guitarist is capable of endless, highly technically proficient metal wankery. This REALLY isn't my thing, so I'm probably missing a lot of the jokes, and the frontman's throat-shredding growl most of the time on most of the songs gets pretty monotonous. But it's all sort of campy and fun and over the top, and the audience is loving it. Oh, and there's a Beatles cover!
