Pop Music Reviews : Ethyl Meatplow Keeps Art-Band Roots Alive

X=Art is gone, Club Theoretical is gone, the Anticlub is pay-to-play, so what remains of the original L.A. art-band underground scene is this: Wherever proto-industrial Hollywood band Ethyl Meatplow decides to show up, which is often at that Silver Lake club whose name we all know can’t be mentioned in a family newspaper.

On Wednesday, Ethyl Meatplow played to a sold-out and sweaty crowd at the tiny Radio club in West Los Angeles, and the suburban nose-ring ‘n’ tattoo contingent strained to see what they could of an extremely visual show performed on an extremely low stage.

Repetitive beat-box riffs pounded out--funky and danceable, not unlike the essence of the Ohio Players--overlaid by noisy synthesizers and a real drummer. Two singers fell toward the audience a lot, bellowing harmonies that resembled stereotypical drunks doing “Sweet Adeline” on the way home from a bar.

Two go-go dancers, one of each gender, danced together demurely as freshmen at a high-school mixture, though neither was wearing anything above the waist. And though the show at times veered perilously close to the corny, it had the undeniable power of realized obsessions, especially the throbbing, dissonant version of “Close to You” that finished the set.