120 Days

8 p.m. Tuesday, March 20. The Gargoyle on the campus of Washington University (Forsyth and Skinker boulevard).

Comments (0) By Annie Zaleski Wednesday, Mar 14 2007

120 Days: Putting the Kraut in rock.

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$10, Wash. U. students free with ID. 314-935-5917.

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Anyone who thinks that 120 Days bassist Jonas Dahl resembles a certain Irish do-gooder may want to think twice before telling him that. "Americans say I sound like Bono," he says. "I find that hard to believe. I'm not a big fan. I don't want to see U2 in any band!" Unsurprisingly, his musical history neatly sums up the Norwegian quartet's sound: Dahl's older brothers introduced him to metal, which eventually led him to the Doors, Velvet Underground and Kraftwerk; these days, he rocks Spacemen 3 and Jesus and Mary Chain albums. The band recorded its self-titled, self-produced debut in Oslo last winter, and the music's chilly ebbs and flows answer a good question: What would Joy Division have sounded like had its lost-in-space synthpop taken heavy cues from droning German Krautrock (Neu!) and primitive new-wave instead of lock-step postpunk? "We had a lot of fun recording the album," singer Ådne Meisfjord says. "It's hard to pinpoint one specific moment that was the best one, because it was like an ongoing journey, working on different songs, trying to figure out the right thing to do, every little detail. We listened to the same song over and over again like a million times. [You'd] close your eyes and try to go to sleeep, and [you'd hear] the same song in your ear. There's no way of stopping it. We take the music pretty seriously, and it's really important for us to make it as good as possible."