You may have noticed that there's a lot of hype nowadays about so-called noise bands a.k.a. "experimental somethingorother." From what my feeble mind can gather, these bands abuse machinery and sound like they're gutting or fucking (or both) an armored tank. Ever wonder what it would sound like if C3PO and R2D2 finally had their way with each other, banging their hard drives together till they both short circuited? Me neither. But obviously lots of people have envisioned this very act because noise is the new Paris Hilton. Sonic Youth, what have you wrought?

Los Angeles' Autolux are not a noise band the way the Wolf Eyes or Hair Police are. Not really. But I guess they could be. They use more wires, pedals, and knobby things than Con Edison. They were once held up at an airport because security was so suspicious of their equipment. And drummer Carla Azar has a reconstructed bionic elbow – eight titanium screws hold it together – making her somewhat of a robot. But the trio is overwhelmingly mellifluous. Comprised of Azar, bassist Eugene Goreshter, and guitarist Greg Edwards (all three share vocals), Autolux grind intense rhythms into droney, lulling dust that can be inhaled on their debut Future Perfect. Sometimes they erupt into scrawling free-form bombast, therefore becoming very noisy and experimental-ish, but the band is more akin to dreamy head trips than industrial diarrhea. And that makes everyone a winner.

I headed over to Irving Plaza to see them when they were opening for Secret Machines. Autolux design their stage set-up, which looked like a cross between a mad scientist's lab and an illuminated igloo. Though they're West Coast kids, they could easily pass for New Yorkers with their bored and unimpressed expressions on their pasty faces and floppy, dirty, wonky hairdos. They didn't say hello, thank you, or fuck you, and went from song to song without fuss.

Lush, crackly, but never dissonant, their set was like songs bleeding out of an electromagnetic force field while playing tricks behind your eyeballs. Goreshter's delicate singing was comfortably at odds with Azar's smash-tastic drumming and Edwards' expansive wall of sound. Daring, crystallized rhythms gathered mass as the songs progressed, occasionally getting smashed with a mallet, sending sparkly shards out into the air. I could have stood and listened to them all night. And I can't remember the last time I made that declaration.

Supagroup at Rothko, New York, NY, March 9, 2005

Let's face it, Aerosmith haven't made a great album in a while. Their last effort, the blues cover album Honkin' On Bobo, honked on neither one of my bobos, and my bobos love a good honkin' on. That job has been taken over by Supagroup, a band I first saw a few years back when they played the Bianca Butthole benefit in Williamsburg.

In town to get a head start on pimpin' their new one Rules, the band set up shop at Rothko, which was swathed in red light making it look like a pit stop in hell. Speaking of hell, Supagroup's brothers, Chris and Benji "The Nu-Angus" Lee grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and were raised by their Pentacostal preacher-mother who didn't let them listen to rock 'n' roll. Sacrilege! So what'd the boys grow up to be? Rock stars, duh. They high-tailed it to New Orleans, leaving all that ice for the most humid weather this side of the Amazon. Tonight, in true rock style, both brothers sported '70s-era feathered hair, with not a drop of irony. Take that, hipster choads!

As Benji tore the muthafuggin guts out of his Gibson, Chris let loose some of the most classic rawk vocals this city's heard in ages, the kind that generate shit-eating grins and flicked tongues. The new songs are dedicated to heathen delicacies: rock, sex, and the bottle. Not that anyone could be confused by titles like "Let's Go Get Wasted," "Hog Wild," and "It Takes Balls." Perhaps the most gratifying element of Supagroup's set was the sheer thrill the fellas transmitted. While the mainstream is being inundated with manicured marionettes who don't know dickzilla about rock's joyful energy, Supagroup is haulin' ass like an 18-wheeler full of horny renegades. Bobos be honkin'.

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