Also this issue:

Positive Charge
For all the controversy, Steve Earle's Jerusalem ends on a profoundly optimistic note.
-Sam Adams

Star Power
Homer Jackson's Dogon PM finds art and science under the same sky.
-Patrick Rapa

Joe Kim
-Patrick Rapa

The Capital City Dusters
-Paul Burress

Engine Down
-John Vettese

GZA
-Paul Burress

Smog
-Paul Burress

DJ Garth
-Sean O’Neal

November 21-27, 2002

musicpicks

Pleasure Club

There's something snide, sneering and smeary about the Southern gothic of Pleasure Club. The way these Louisianans make Anglo-glam ape its own Southern origins. The way singer James Hall leans into the hard art-rock of the Club's fury with epic whoa-ohs and grand garglings. The sensuous suckle he lends the word "daaaaady." Yipes: Call Tennessee Williams. Those vocal cues are so very Bowie, the one looking for the heart of America on Aladdin Sane. Add to that Hall's lyrical sense of adventure, and you get the delicious drama of Pleasure Club's debut CD, Here Comes the Trick. Each track -- whether it's the hollow-bodied acoustics of "One Hand Washes the Other," or the nerve-jangled flow of "High Stepping" -- feels like a frantically told lie. And each tune feels great going down.

Fri., Nov. 22, 9:30 p.m., $7, with Ty Cobb, Longwave and Persona, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888.

—A.D. Amorosi