Tonight: Huntronik, Linus Pauling Quartet, & Jealous Creatures at Mango’s

Not too far back, low-key Mexican restaurant/venue Mango’s shuffled up their booking people, and ever since, they’ve been throwing some excellent, excellent shows on the pile. Most lately seem to have been mostly in the punk/noise realm — which is a bit of a shift for Mango’s, I have to say — but tonight, Wednesday, February 19th, is a damn cool show that falls in a different bucket entirely…

Headliners Huntronik (who I’m least familiar with, honestly) hail from Brooklyn in a physical sense but from late-1970s Berlin in terms of their sound. The music’s electronic and stark and coldly funky and spacey, like Kraftwerk if they’d dropped acid and started seeing some seriously weird shit. They call themselves a “powerkraut” band, and yeah, that pretty much says it all, right there.

Before they hit the stage, though, there’s our very own psych-sludge heroes, the {Linus Pauling Quartet}, who deserve every damn high-five I can give ’em. These dudes are heavy and low to the ground, with guitars that rock so fucking hard they can freeze time like glass and then shatter it into a billion bright shards. (Caveat: I cannot guarantee there will be any time-stoppage happening tonight. Your mileage may vary.)

They lean heavily towards the psych-rock realm, thundering through songs about wizards and aliens and state parks and porn, and they do it all with big, goofy grins on their collective face.

Finally, make sure you get there early, because you really, truly do not want to miss the opener of the evening, {Jealous Creatures}. The band is pretty damn different from either of the other two on the bill, it’s true, but trust me, they’re well worth hearing — think the Cowboy Junkies and Elastica all jammed together in some sort of The Fly-esque transportation chamber, and what gets morphed together into a single entity will be damn close to what the Creatures sound like.

They’re rough in just the right spots and sultry in others, with the whole thing coming off like the soundtrack to a desperate, windswept road movie you’ve never seen, one where our heroes(?) roar down the desert highway with the law a half a state behind.

The show’s $7, and doors open at 8PM. Get there, dammit.