A resolutely sold-out house hosts the soul-baring primality of Blue Jungle breathing air as thick as the cobalt hell of arms and legs and other extremities flailing about in authentic fervor for the subgutural wailings of obtuse chanteuse Lately Blu Blu, the applause for whom is strangled by devotional shrieks and it’s less rock than a worshipful holy rolling.  Revelatory, in several senses of the word.  Abe Vigoda storms the stage shortly and drums gallop along with circular/spiky riffs exploding out into the audience, pulling in people from the alley with every turn of the machine and suddenly the band steps directly off the face of the sun, their words grinding into nothingness under a wheel that is not so much re-invented as it is polished brightly after a sandstorm.  It comes in waves and keeps coming, identity holding steadfast against age and ossification, youth distilled down to its essence: movement, in as many directions as will and chaos and energy will allow.  Nite Jewel stands built of bass, drum machine and synths, converting the heat of the crowd into energy as they go nuclear without all the messier consequence of things like mutant babies.  The rhythms and melodies here are vaguely Afro-Cuban; humid white man’s funk in a world of—at best—grey and at worst, light beige.  Ramona Gonzalez’s and Emily Jane’s voices float over the fringes and their beats descend like visitors from planets much more interesting than this one.  It’s a much heavier atmosphere now—some percentage of which seems to be made of Quaaludes—trancelike moments woven from a skein of lust into a binary star of sex and remoteness.  Make no mistake about it: this is compelling music, big and fulfilling as deep drowsiness, which is one of the most underrated altered states around.

—David Cotner