This band of country western carnival gypsies is the deranged cousin in a diverse family tree–one in which Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar is the Eastern European grandmother and Nick Cave the wayward father. Like many country-esque bands of late, Spindrift founder Kirpatrick Thomas’ obsession with Western culture was born of its mythology rather than childhood experience; Thomas grew up in Delaware before moving to LA in 2001. And debut album on the Dandy Warhols’ new Beat the World label, The West, rather than painting a trite caricature of a region the artist knows relatively little about, reflects the individual impact of different cultures, Western and beyond, on Thomas’ musical persona. Not only does the album combine East and West with its Lou Reed-ian appeal, it visits foreign locales (“The Klezmer Song,” “La Noche Mas Oscura”) for a sonic result that, as with all tourists, is shaped as much by the traveler’s point of view as by the traveler’s environment. And though Thomas describes his band as “psychedelic spaghetti Western,” there’s more invested in the head trip than its Western destination.

Sun., Nov. 16, 8 p.m., 2008