Hair Police
w/Prurient, Kites

Mon April 12, Rendezvous, 10 pm, $5.

When it comes to newly popular music genres among the post-adolescent set, there's some truth to the syllogism "noise is the new emo." But where others may despair of modern youth's tendencies to cluster around trends, this is a fad worth encouraging . What better way to shock the suburbs than to go for noise? Even the low-culture metal-heads I grew up with had the fallback of "musical skill" as a noble pursuit in itself--a noise regime would upend any notion of meritocracy.

Which makes a Hair Police tour like a pioneering Johnny Appleseed in short pants. The Lexington, Kentucky, trio deals in a brand of dread, menacing the upstart American rock underground with the subtlety of a piano dropping from the sky. On their numerous releases on labels like Freedom From and their own Gods of Tundra imprint, and touring the USA with comperes Mammal and Neon Hunk, Hair Police bring an atavistic approach to electronics as punk rock, bludgeoning ears with so much sinister distorto skree.

Singer Mike Connelly comes off like a rage rocker who got sent to the wrong section of the record store, bringing home an armful of Harry Pussy records like they were Nirvana. This is not to perpetuate an image that watching Hair Police is a Kubrickian monkey-meets-monolith fiasco of devolution, though it's tempting to picture this tour as a Lord of the Flies for Gen Y.

Load labelmate Kites might serve as the equivalent of Piggy--Christopher Forgues, edumacated at the Rhode Island School of Design, has some repute as a visual artist. His stellar headfuck of a full-length, Royal Paint with the Metallic Gardener from the United States of America Helped into an Open Field by Women and Children, seems somehow purer than Hair Police, maybe just refined to one man's freak-out with a four-track, even delving into chanty vocal and folk-guitar weirdness à la Amps for Christ. And Bulb Records honcho Pete Larson calls Prurient "the only active noise act worth seeing today." I can neither confirm nor deny this statement, but it'll be well worth donning some earplugs to find out. After tonight, you might have a new pet genre.

editor@thestranger.com