Phases and Stages

A Tiger Named Lovesick, Dead Whale Tide, Sound Team

Mercury, Aug. 22 Everyone needs to indulge their inner Eighties craving, this three-band local bill offering a variety of fixes for your Donnie Darko urges, from the cheery electro-bop pop of Sound Team, to the moody wanderings of Dead Whale Tide, and the Joy Division posturing of A Tiger Named Lovesick. Dead Whale Tide's frontman, singer/guitarist Justin Preston, delivered the Peter Murphy eye candy clad in a Grim Reaper T-shirt, while he and his fellow players belted out the kind of mope-rock disenfranchised teens of a certain alphabetically monikered generation listened to in their bedrooms when they wanted to jerk off in peace. The music was hypnotic, but the sonic drift of such introspective music doesn't leave much for the mind to moor itself on, especially in a chatty nightclub. The real winners on the bill were Sound Team, considering that the sixpiece is still a baby band, having only been together a year. From the homemade T-shirts at the merch table to bassist Bill Baird's adorably robotic bopping, this group is thoroughly energizing, offering up short, powerful bursts of roller-skate jams tighter than Madonna's old bustiers. "It sounds like a video game!" smiled one spectator. Sure, if video games rocked. At the tail end of the bill, headliners A Tiger Named Ian Curtis ... er, Lovesick offered up a set derivative enough of Joy Division that the local trio might want to stick to covering that band's catalog. Molly Ringwald, your comeback is waiting.