Beep Beep

9 p.m. Saturday, April 25. The Firebird, 2706 Olive Street.

Apr 22, 2009 at 4:00 am

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The unbearable cuteness of being in a band called Beep Beep is hardly mitigated by the conceptual dalliances of the 2009 release, Enchanted Islands, an interlocking suite of songs about (wait for it) being enchanted. Nebraskans Eric Bemberger and Chris Hughes (both formerly of Gabardine) craft breathless, surrealist vignettes of childhood nightmares, starfish death and shopping for human hair, and then reverse-engineer them with classic acid jams, strummy anti-folk, advanced math rock, arcade-game bleats and boings — plus saxophones and funk bass. The result is something like the Gang of Four trapped in Pee-wee's Playhouse and exhausting every musical trick — no matter how dissonant or half-baked — to just get out. Hard to imagine this strange, escapist journey working live, but with Beep Beep's libertine creativity, anything is possible.