Kevin Bronson on July 20th, 2009

0

The songs of Miss Derringer are filled with tears, and blood, and an unhealthy dose of weaponry and various sharp objects. The Los Angeles quintet, not unlike the visual art of its frontwoman Liz McGrath, roots around in a sort of Gothic-tinged Americana while applying a whimsical veneer to its tales of felonies, misdemeanors and crimes against the heart. McGrath doesn’t just smile at Death, she shimmies a bit for it too.

Live, Miss Derringer is a strange, wonderful and strangely photogenic force. On Saturday night at the Knitting Factory, McGrath and bandmates Morgan Slade (her husband), Lightnin’ Bill Woodcock, Sylvain de Muizon and Cody James were at their black-dressed best, showing only a little fatigue from the show’s being Day 45 on a tour supporting Girl in a Coma. McGrath’s vocals were a little thin (or was it the sound at the Knitting Factory, which I won’t miss at all?), but her charisma came through loud and clear – all playful vamping in a black cocktail dress while her guys played the straight men in black, embroidered Western shirts.

It’s a winning combination, and it has to be, because Miss Derringer’s music doesn’t abide any specific genre. (It’s kind of the same blessing/curse with another imaginative but underappreciated SoCal band, Gram Rabbit.) Miss D’s supporters will tell you “Johnny Cash-meets-Blondie,” and that’s a good start. At Saturday’s show, I imagined a ’50s girl group playing a honky-tonk to a crowd of punk rockers … who possibly needed help with their dance moves. Sweet, boozy and edgy, all at once.

The set drew heavily from the band’s third album, “Winter Hill” (released July 14 on Nickel and Dime Records). The collection, which features cameos from Blondie’s Clem Burke and Throw Rag’s Sean Wheeler, references a 1960 mob war in Boston, and from all the carnage in the songs, it must have been a bloody one. But in its own stylistically hyphenated way, Miss Derringer makes it dark and sweet at the same time. Recommended.

||| Download: “Black Tears”

||| Video: Below, “Click Click (Bang Bang)”