BUZZ BANDS

‘Seamless’ start?

It’s amazing the Peels even got together, let alone made music that has landed them in negotiations with a major record label. The quartet, formed in Seattle and now based in the Bay Area (though they gig around L.A. enough to know Silver Lake from Echo Park), plays churning, vintage garage rock -- but it’s a really nice garage. “Where you’d park an ’81 Trans Am,” bassist Josh Vieu says, when the analogy is suggested. Well, then, behind the wheel you’d find Robyn Miller, the sultry frontwoman upon whose uneasy alliances the Peels were formed. Miller and Vieu were co-workers at a coffeehouse -- “she hated my guts,” Vieu recalls -- and she initially met guitarist Lane Rider on an ill-fated blind date. But Rider pressed the musical bond between the two, who asked Vieu to join them, and they found drummer Kenneth Small living, conveniently, in a practice space. Their sound, which most recalls the Pretenders, evolved naturally given Miller’s direful vocals and melt-your-heart glare. “The way everything came together is seamless,” says Vieu, whose band plays Monday at the Scene in Glendale and Tuesday at Spaceland. “It’s as if it had to be.”

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Singer’s soul found

You know Steve Poltz, even if you never ran across his Mercury Records release “One Left Shoe” from 1998, or if you never caught the Rugburns, his band that laughed as hard as it rocked. You know Poltz because the San Diego coffeehouse-circuit favorite co-wrote the Jewel hit “You Were Meant for Me.” Trouble was, Poltz didn’t know himself -- at least not how he wanted to sound. So he scrapped his finished album and re-recorded “Chinese Vacation,” releasing it last year. “It’s taken me a long time to grow into my own skin,” Poltz says. The album courses with his trademark humor and cleverness, but also the poignancy of a 44-year-old minstrel who takes personal inventory and occasionally finds “your whole life can be one long Spinal Tap moment,” he says. Poltz did some serious soul-searching after the murder three years ago of a troubled friend. The singer testified at the trial, and the malaise contributed to his dissatisfaction with the original “Chinese Vacation.” “I love being a troubadour; I love telling stories on stage,” says Poltz, who performs Friday night at the Knitting Factory’s Alterknit Lounge. “It’s been a long process of discovery.”

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Fast Forward

And they thank Devo in the liner notes: Japan’s Polysics’ album “Neu” (on Asian Man Records) mixes synthy bleeps and jagged guitars into some neck-snapping dance-punk; the quirkily outfitted quartet plays Sunday at Chain Reaction, Monday at Amoeba Records and Tuesday at the Knitting Factory.... Dress pretty -- at the sold-out Avenged Sevenfold show Saturday at the Henry Fonda Theatre, the O.C.-based rockers will be filming for their upcoming video.... Down-under alert: Anne McCue, the singer-songwriter with endorsements from the likes of Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams and Dave Alvin, performs Wednesday at Club Lingerie. She relocated to L.A. from Australia to complete work on her recent album, “Roll.” ... And the Australian trio the Beautiful Girls, who aren’t girls at all, play their first L.A. shows tonight and Friday at the Troubadour.