Bathed in flashing pink and green light was a pint-sized, shop-window ready Miss Pussycat — literally. Her head was on a mini mannequin popping out from behind a curtain. She appeared to cheers and loud, ringing claps from the audience. Someone waved a metallic baton. The warmup act, The Simple Pleasure, hopped up and down wildly in their gym shorts and tank tops, spraying sweat as they pumped their fists in anticipation. The DJ If Jesus Had Machine Guns perfected his single dance move of the night.
“We’re going to have a puppet show!” Miss Pussycat began. The audience cheered. “And then a dance party with Quintron!”
Lucy Gellman Photo
And a dance party was it ever. Late Monday night, the funky Louisiana-based group appeared at Cafe Nine, bringing their mix of swamp-techno, puppetry, and tongue-in-cheek dialogue to a small but ramped-up crowd.
The group’s magic lay in their indefatigable energy and inventive music. From the moment the puppet show opened — a not-quite-of-this-world saga about a cake baking contest and the goblin determined to win it — to the end of their very loud, very late set, the group showed no sign of stopping, inviting audience members to come close to the stage at every chance they had. A group of 15 or so did, some exploring Quintron’s headlight-adorned slide keyboard and fabricated, synthtastic instruments, while others swung wildly (and from the rafters) to the persistent beat, transforming Cafe Nine into an adult jungle gym.
What kept the band going in this rager-meets-bayou-meets-electric aural orgy, exactly? Maybe it was their Drum Buddy, a light-activated analog synthesizer “which creates murky, low-fidelity, rhythmic patterns” and set a rock-‘n’-roll-meets-technofest-meets-lightsaber backdrop for the group’s eclectic melodies. Or Ms. Pussycat’s unexpected, round outbursts of sound, ranging from smooth and almost saccharine to throaty and harsh. Or the group’s pithy lyrics, hard to hear over the keyboard but brilliant when they made it as far as the audience’s ears. Or maybe it was the performance garb — less Quintron’s shirt, but we won’t talk about that — which suggested an impending reconciliation of twee, rock, and rave.
I have one more hypothesis: the Simple Pleasure, rocking out onstage and off in their skivvies. Cafe Nine has a knack for booking warm-up acts that blow the audience away, and this is one of the best to have performed for a while. Influenced by bands of the 1970s and 1980s, the group is utterly refreshing: vocalist Chad Raines (pictured below), who has gained somewhat of a cult following in New Haven, is a real live wire, a dizzying, enthralling mix of David Byrne, Glenn Danzig, the Scissor Sisters, and John Cale with the physical acrobatics of Vitaly Scherbo thrown in. The group’s material follows suit, ranging from a cover of the Misfits‘ “Christmas at Seaworld” to their rock-ballad-meets-kitchen-realities “Milkshake,” a mix of wavering, shrieking vocals and guitar riffs that still managed to come off as unbelievably charming.
Together, the groups created a palpable energy that wound its way from the back of the bar to the front of the stage. Even more impressive, in what became a nearly three-hour musical odyssey, none of the performers showed signs of stopping. So what if Crown had long closed down for the evening? People were just getting started.
For the latest on Cafe Nine, visit their events page or follow them on Twitter (https://twitter.com/cafenine).
