The Suicide Girls Burlesque Tour w/ The Prowl and Bloom

Pearl Street

Northampton

Feb. 10

NORTHAMPTON – Art met exploitation at the Pearl Street Nightclub last Tuesday night as the Suicide Girls Burlesque Tour rolled into the Pioneer Valley to titillate the Hot Topic clad masses.

The Suicide Girls website began when pierced and tattooed entrepreneurs opted to start an online softcore adult site catering to the underserved Goth, punk, indie and emo crowds. The site became an underground success, eventually spawning a touring show modeled after the old burlesque shows of yore – a tour that dedicated fans of the site (who know models by name) helped sell out as it crossed the country, playing to hipster audiences.

Never knowing much about the actual site itself – beyond what I’ve heard in various magazine and newspaper articles – and not being fond of adult websites myself, I went in knowing only vaguely what I was wading into. The novelty of a modern-day burlesque show, one that springs from the defiantly non-mainstream world of punk rock, was an intriguing offer and one worth checking out in a life too short to miss out on such silly concepts.

For those who don’t know, a burlesque show is a bawdy, sexed-up dance review show that had its heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Goofy and silly, burlesques were broad, vaudevillian adult entertainments that pre-dated the stripping craze of the late 20th Century, but skirted around questions of exploitation by presenting the dance as an art form.

The Suicide Girls Burlesque Tour was neither art nor exploitation, but more of a novel gimmick. You could add pointless to that description too. In it’s own way, the whole packaged show was entertaining enough, but it seemed detached and far too hip for it’s own good, which may explain why the audience was primarily made of indie- scenesters dressed up in mod fashions.

The disparate, oddball groups of “outsiders” and “fringe-dwellers” (becoming increasingly less fringe thanks to the corporate co-opting of modern punk) quickly shuffled in after the doors opened. There were the beefy guys in liberty spikes and Mohawks, black clad girls stuffed into tight-fitting Victorian corsets and guys who dressed either in pin stripe suits or who tried, mightily, to resemble members of the Beatles. It was an eclectic mix even for a show dedicated to society’s “misfits.”

The burlesque was packaged with two opening musical acts, making this partially a rock concert. Kicking things off was western Massachusetts’s hardcore punk rockers The Prowl, who’s toothy; spitfire sound resembled the breakneck assaults of recent acts like The Bronx and The Casualties. The band’s ear-splitting assaults were prime examples of crusty punk at its most mundane and generic. The lunkheaded moshers beating each other at the front of the stage no doubt could have hardly cared that this kind of stuff has been done before, and done better, with far more ingenuity than the lead singer’s bland “f*** you!” attitude. Except for the singer, the band lacked presence, rooting themselves in place for the entire set (and they call themselves punks.) But even the singer’s antic flailings felt too choreographed to seem genuine. The Prowl struck me as less of a traditionalist punk band then a group of boys play-acting the role of punk rockers.

As the moshing meatheads disbanded at the end of the set, the hipsters fell in line at the front of the stage in order to catch Bloom, the Floridian rock band that has been with the Suicide Girls tour throughout the girls’ jaunt. I vastly preferred Bloom’s contribution to music over the tired sneering of the vastly routine boys of the Prowl. Yet another retro-garage sounding band, the trio played a satisfying – if not totally groundbreaking – blend of sweet Britpop, swaggering rock ‘n’roll and blistering punk-infused power-pop. (Thankfully the band avoids the Velvet Underground-influenced drone that seems to pop up on every post-Strokes garage rockers albums.) Like the Prowl, the lyrics often got blurred in the rush of singer Devin Moore’s voice and the pounding crunch of the music. (The band’s fine new CD, “O Sinner,” will help clear up that problem for new fans.) On a night short on rock’n’roll moments, it became a highlight when a guitar string snapped right off – and the band kept playing. It was far cooler of a sight than anything done by the frantic posturing of the Prowl. Moore “dedicated” a song to his not-beloved ex-girlfriend, and while the always-detached scenester crowd more or less acted indifferent (as they always tend to do, lest it break their “hipster” fa