We were supposed to have some spiffy photos for this article but they fell through, so here in their place is a less-than-dynamic posed promo shot of The Rapture. Knock yourselves out.

If the New York Dolls were fronted by a female banshee, and imported death disco grooves from London, this Portland trio might have played at Max's Kansas City. But since this is the Knitting Factory in anno 2001, I must admit it's not the Dolls, but Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre. Like a louder, less tranny version of the Dolls, the band suprisingly lifts their riffs from the heavy rock and goth canons. Their Mackenzie Phillips-haired vocalist, Ida No, sings and screams in a Kate Bush-like wail as the band comes in loud and heavy, like the intros to classic acid rock, as bassist John David V strums his cheap, vintage Harmony and drummer Avalon Kalin pounds the skins.

If you really think about it, Glass Candy would only be a couple of broad steps away from Metal, if Ida No wasn't such an elegant goth/drama queen. But I don't think you'd think that, so we'll move on.

On one song, Ida No sand over repeating chords while Kalin clicked his drumsticks together. The song degenerated into noise and goth banshee wails, then picked up where it left off. John David V, with black feathered hair, torn American flag shirt, slacks and slightly platform brown dress shoes, had the awesome John Taylor moves, but the band's set ended prematurely due to broken equipment.

Next up was Sacramento's Outhud (who've recently relocated to NYC), who began their set while other members were still tuning, which wasn't so obvious because they mix trancey, ambient grooves and speak n' spell new wave over a drum machine beat.

Outhud is two keyboardists (one male, one female), a chick wielding an unwieldy Gretsch, and a male bassist.

Their second song, ambient with distortion-laden wave scapes, turned off and on to meld with the beat as the guitar rang, bell-like, and ventured toward trebly Sonic Youth-style doodling.

Each song began with a basic drum machine beat and bass. Guitar and keyboards slowly built ambience over it, and fell into each other. The bass and guitar occasionally ventured into dissonance, then revved up to light noise with New Age type keys. Then Outhud grooved with synth congas and right bass; the whole band was dancing, and the male keyboardist broke into an '80s b-boy dance. I think he was serious, too.

Outhud's next song was a long new wave groove. The bassist, having taken over on guitar, played the same chord over and over, like a synth loop, eventually expanding his riff to include a couple more strings, plucked over a background keyboard wavescapes. At one point, if he hadn't had his guitar on, he would've been poppin' and lockin'. The keyboardist did the fratboy thing while the others packed up the equipment. I couldn't wait for the next band to go on.

Gang Gang Dance played a short set; indeed, it took longer for them to set up than to play. Each song, if it was a song, melded into the next. The trio sang their avant-vocals, guttural and choir-like into the microphone, while the drummer leaned over his keyboard to tap on drum pads. Sounding like a less scary and more arty Goblin or Yoko Ono, the vocals continued over hard, cacophonous percussion. The drummer played '80s horror B movie keys while the female vocalist kept a foot solidly on her distortion pedal, transmuting her voice to a manly growl.

The guitar and high pitched vocals were accompanied by a Mr. Rogers-type melody, punctuated by bass keys and strange drum time sequences, followed by creepy dollhouse music over distorted treble guitar that careened from screaming into noise, noise into screaming.

I always welcome saxophones in rock bands, so you'd assume I'd have been down for the post-punk stylings of the headlining band, The Rapture. Their sax, at first barely audible, sounded like a keyboard over the blaring guitars, but then kicked up nicely later.

The guitarist/vocalist sings like early PiL-era John Lydon, or The Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler, while the bass-player had nice moves. He swung and tapped like The Knack or The Beatles, and his vocal harmonies were sweetly off-key.

The Rapture's first song had a good start -- harmonizing guitar and bass, the nice chorus of guitarist Luke Jenner's whiny voice and the pretty, slightly off-key vocals of bassist Matt Safer. Jenner thrashed some chords, while the saxophonist played maracas, until the song ended with sax and diminishing guitar.

The next song mixed sax and the trademarked Jeff Buckley vocal flutter, with Safer, a far less stylized vocalist, picking up his share of the lyrics as well. "The Jam" came next, building over the screams of the crowd to an indie sort of jam, sans sax, followed by the title track from their recent EP Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks.

The blonde, mop-topped Jenner jumped around, sank to the floor, jumped back and sang in one fell swoop. Impressive. Next came "Modern Romance", a distorted post-punk jam with the sax rocking out.

The Lydon influence was obvious bythe time the band played "Pop Song", its PIL-ness more apparent live than on record. Someone in the audience shouted, "More funk, less punk" -- not that the Rapture are playing punk, mind you, so much as that tired old post-punk retread that all the kids are doing today (which in some cases can be brilliant, I will admit). While the twenty-something crowd clearly loved them, Jenner, Safer and drummer Vito Roccoforte were not highly original. It should be noted, though, that Jenner played so hard, blood smeared in splotches over his guitar...so he definitely gets points for trying.

Article by Trinity Canty.