Ex-Models ft. Kid Millions

EX-MODELS FT. KID MILLIONS
Chrome Panthers
(Troubleman Unlimited)

Funnily enough, models and noise bands have a lot in common: Models fool the eye, musicians go to work on the ear, and both can be beautiful train wrecks at their most potent. Cacophony can be graceful and carefully staged or indulgent and drab. Like an anonymous pretty face, it's ephemeral. In New York, the art punks are as ubiquitous as the beauties, and Chrome Panthers isn't going to change that. Even at the zipless-fuck length of 27 minutes, it's all foreplay—too much nuance and not enough action. "Chrome Panthers," at just over a minute, allows them the gnarl of amp buzz and light tingle they're after, as if Shahin Motia shreds her guitar with the apartment keys. The sprawl that typifies "That's Funny I Don't Feel Like a Shithead" and "Mutiny" never works to the band's advantage. The former is a tribal taunt courtesy of drummer Kid Millions (Oneida) that beats itself to misery in circadian patterns. Live, that rumble makes for satisfying whiplash, but my own heart murmur has better rhythm. "Mutiny" chugs like a roller coaster to the drop point, pulsating along as Motia and bassist Zaxh yelp themselves to gleeful repose. "Buy American" mimics a piercing slide whistle with guitar pedals; the resistance to turning it off is practically a matter of audience participation. Yeesh. KATE SILVER

Ex-Models play the Funhouse with Dropsonic and Black Horse at 4 p.m. Sun., Nov. 6, $6; and at Gallery 1412 at 8 p.m. Sun., Nov. 6. $5–$15.

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE
Broken Social Scene
(Arts & Crafts)

A year before Arcade Fire's Funeral, Toronto band Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It in People was the life-affirming indie-rock record passed from friend to weary friend, and the band's live shows were a notoriously inspired accompaniment. BSS have always been musically incestuous, with participation from members of Do Make Say Think, Stars, Metric, and the inimit-able Leslie Feist; now six new members join for their third album. If BSS's previous work was the analysis of an experiment in polyamory—simmering with excitement, nostalgia, and a little bitterness—Broken Social Scene is the curtain pushed back on a group of lovers as they invite us into the process. Instruments affectionately compete for attention; unintelligible voices pile up giddily. Characters whisper and moan and sing when moved, slink away for alone time, and return with a rhyme, rap (courtesy of K-OS on the jammed-out "Windsurfing Nation"), or hook (the exhilarating single "7/4"). Nothing is repeated for long; songs like opener "Our Faces Break the Coast in Half" are so thick with sound, they seem to contain an infinite number of possible others. There's an awkwardness that was absent on YFIIP, which was so instantly likable it was obscene. Here, BSS don't apologize for keeping their audience at arm's length—an adventurousness that gets them exactly what they need. RACHEL SHIMP

Broken Social Scene play the Showbox with Feist and the Most Serene Republic at 8 p.m. Sat., Nov. 12. $15 adv./$18. All ages.

THE CLIENTELE
Strange Geometry
(Merge)

The Clientele have a pleasurably elusive relationship with time and its passage. Their songs seem to take place in an eternal recent past existing somewhere at dusk—maybe two months ago, maybe 40 years. Apart from Alasdair MacLean's comfortingly predictable reliance on the lyrical details of dying daylight, their most conspicuous anchor to the past is their becalmed '60s sound, and even though Strange Geometry shaves away some of the retro murk of reverb and filtered vox, a galaxy of reference points remain (Love, Velvets, Zombies). In light of this, it's a relief that the album's most affecting and naked expression of nostalgia ("Losing Haringey") involves a man unexpectedly recapturing the feel of 1982 rather than 1967—it suggests '60s-ness tapped for its ability to evoke a general sense of distance and displacement, not the good feelings you harbor toward all your favorite songs from bygone eras. (Except when the guitars half-quote the Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me" on the first song, which is actually kind of lovable.) Likewise, the narrators of nearly every other song walk blasted around the streets and sidewalks of London, dizzy with sorrow, lost in crowds, and lured into other moments of city life where the ancient and modern seem to co-exist. MICHAEL DADDINO

The Clientele play Chop Suey with Radar Brothers and Annie Hayden at 8 p.m. Tues., Nov. 15. $10 adv.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Children of Nuggets
(Rhino)

How do you measure success? According to Nigel Cross, former editor of the fanzines Bucket-full of Brains and hartbeat!, it's not by record sales or "lines of A&R men with fat checkbooks queuing round the block at gigs." A 7-inch single, some press—even the smallest achievements can find their way into a larger legacy. Just ask guitarist Lenny Kaye, who blew the dust off a host of British Invasion–era also-rans when he compiled the double-LP Nuggets for Elektra in 1972. The title of the compilation—reissued by Rhino as part of a 1998 box set, followed by the Euro-centric Nuggets II in 2001—became a genre unto itself, one that would inspire a generation of bands on the new four-disc box set Children of Nuggets, which includes extensive liner notes from Cross. Just as the definition of a "nugget" is rather nebulous, the producers of Children of Nuggets don't quite define their artists by a singular sound. Instead, consider the context: Between 1975 and 1990, fanzines were the pony express of the underground, a way for most bands with some single on a tiny label to gain exposure. Robert Jelinek of Sweden's the Creeps sounds just as anguished as the Sonics' Gerry Rosalie, patron saint of garage-rock squalor, did 20 years earlier.