The Dead Science

Details

The Dead Science performs on Wednesday, Oct. 15. 8 p.m., $10; 861-2011. www.rickshawstop.com.

Rickshaw Stop

Related Content

• Performance Artist Ann Magnuson Will Perform as David Bowie Tomorrow Night
  October 26, 2011
• Destroyer, Nine Albums In, Remains A Singular Band, Plays Monday at Great American Music Hall
  March 18, 2011
• Robyn Hitchcock Talks About 1990's Eye and Returning to San Francisco
  November 15, 2011
• So True
  January 26, 2011
• Robyn Hitchcock: Show Preview
  November 16, 2011

More About

• Sam Mickens
• Freddie Mercury
• David Byrne
• David Bowie
• Celebrity News

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Seattle-based Dead Science is either a pop band with experimental inclinations or an avant-garde combo disguised with contemporary mannerisms. On its fifth album, Villainaire, the trio offers feverishly fuzzed-out guitar, spastic rhythms, and melodramatic instrumental outbursts. Such jarring elements are made more hospitable with the seductive warmth of guitarist Sam Mickens' singing. His vibrato, portentous yelp, and over-the-top dramatics evoke David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and Destroyer's Dan Bejar. Mickens (also a member of Xiu Xiu) is both the melodic anchor and the subtle comic relief for the disc's jagged Minutemen-meets-Genesis nature. The downside of his delivery comes in his David Byrne Semiotics Songwriting 101 lyrics ("Enervated and crippling unsure/Jazz fist into the body of a girl/Let the sails and curtains unfurl/To become my ghost costume"). The Dead Science aims to place an interesting spin on dissonant art rock, but add the overwrought lyrics to an overall lack of engaging tunes, and Villainaire is more novel than it is gratifying.