Kevin Bronson on June 3rd, 2009

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Gliss’ current tour may not necessarily be one for the ages, but it’s certainly one for the police blotter.

The L.A. trio, criss-crossing the country in support of its sophomore release “Devotion Implosion” [review], has felt the exhilaration of playing several bang-up shows – they circle back to L.A. and play with Von Iva on Friday at the Roxy. But that’s been tempered by anguish of having been ripped off in New Jersey and the panic of having dodged bullets in Austin, Texas.

Multi-instrumentalist Marty Klingman, on the phone from Texas earlier this week, was accentuating the positive: “You get used to playing in L.A., you get into your routines and your cliques, and you think that’s all there is. You get trapped into thinking that you’re one thing because the city stamps you in a certain way. Going on tour is like stepping out of the bubble. … It’s such a breath of fresh air.”

Klingman and bandmates Victoria Cecilia and David Reiss have also enjoyed a warm reception for their new batch of icy, fuzzed-out rock noir – even if they were rudely greeted one early May morning in Newark, N.J. The band awoke to find their van had been burglarized, and among the missing items was a Fender Precision bass that Klingman received as a gift from his grandfather. “Maybe the emotion will hit me after I get home – you’re so tired and busy out on the road, you don’t feel anything,” says Klingman, who adds that when he discovered it missing, “I just pictured my grandfather, actually. He got me started when I was a kid, and he was the sweetest guy …

“In one way, I think of (the theft) as just one more thing people do nowadays. I’ve been through so many things in my life that this just seems like another.”

Then, last week in Austin, the members of Gliss had a harrowing experience after a show at Emo’s. A shooting outside an adjacent club, Spiro’s, left six people injured – and had Klingman, Cecilia and Reiss decided to load out their equipment moments earlier than they did, they would have been in the line of fire. [Photos, etc., on Gliss’ blog.]

“We were going to load out, but the doorguy wouldn’t let us right away because there was a big fight outside,” Cecilia says. “Then as soon as we opened to the door, we heard shots – they sounded like firecrackers – so everybody ran back inside the club. Afterward we grabbed what we could and ran to our van. People were lying in the street bleeding. … The Boxing Lesson and Von Iva (both of whom had played the show with Gliss) had blood on their vans. If we had come out the door seconds sooner …”

||| Live: Gliss performs with Von Iva at the Roxy on Friday.