Kevin Bronson on January 23rd, 2015

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The raging punk-cum-blues of the band Virginia Reed isn’t the work of anybody named Virginia at all — the L.A. quartet is helmed by singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Keith Hendriksen, who in the current lineup is surrounded by John Klein, Jeff Watson and Bryan Hamilton. The band’s moniker derives from a 1940s-era portrait of a woman that Hendricksen encountered at an estate sale; he felt he’d met her before. Creepy, yes? Virginia Reed’s forthcoming second full-length, “Potential Enemies,” seethes with similar forbidding undertones. No matter whether there’s any truth in “What I Learned From Getting Shot,” you believe it, Hendriksen roaring over a full-frontal assault of guitar and rhythms. Virginia Reed released a handful of EPs between their 2009 debut and this new album (which comes out Feb. 10), and as pitch-black as some the early songs were, few packed the wallop of the new single (whose video was directed by Gus Black), songs such as “Tie a Rope” and “Crooked Crowd” or the galloping “Young Punks.” Get physical.

||| Stream: “What I Learned From Getting Shot” and “Tie a Rope”

Photo by Andrew Christmas