Album Review: Reviver [EP] by Abe Vigoda

Reviver doesn’t simply take the concepts laid down in Skeleton and give them a novel new twist. Instead, this is the sound of a completely different band, barely recognizable from the fumbling, itchy and trebly guitars that prickled through tracks like “Dead City/Waste Wilderness” from the preceding record. They’ve undergone a process of attrition, of paring down the Abe Vigoda sound until it represents something totally new.

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Abe Vigoda may not be a name one recognizes, but after opening for bands like Diplo and No Age, they just might be well on their way. Based out of Los Angeles, the quartet recently released a full-length album in 2008, Skeleton. Abe Vigoda plays a blend of rock and noise, while catchy pop elements pepper the album. Although released in a relatively short period of time, Skeleton and Reviver are strikingly different from each other.

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Key figures in the music scene surrounding L.A.’s art/performance space The Smell, Abe Vigoda play a post-punk variant that splits the difference between jittery punk and the more aggressively rhythmic strains of indie and underground rock. When at their best, they’re all raging drums clashing with noisy guitar patterns that somehow coalesce into fun, catchy melodies. The result is at once danceable, energetic, and hummable.

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Debut solo EP by Angel Deradoorian softens the sonic chunks of her day band, Brooklyn's Dirty Projectors. Deradoorian's entrancing vocals, the perfect complement to the music, recalls a more come-hither Portishead ("Holding Pattern") and drones with mysticism (closer "Moon"). More from her. (Sat., Mohawk, 8:50pm.) Violens (Cantora) If the Smiths had gotten more sun, they might have sounded like this NYC quartet, though the harmonies harken back even further to the late 1960s.

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