Kid Congo Powers is a master of a very specific type of slinky, damaged, vampiric and shrill music. It’s primitive rock, pale and greasy.
The guitarist and singer has played with the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. With such destruction-courting outfits on his resume, it’s amazing the guy is still alive. He’s a spooky, surf-garage, art-noise, dandy mystic, part Vincent Price, part R. Crumb, part John Waters.
Like Tom Waits, Kid Congo Powers’ recordings conjure a dark aesthetic universe of decrepitude and lurching indifference. For a glimpse of truly uncompromising punk vision, catch Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds along with the Tet Offensive and Mr. Airplane Man at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven, Saturday, May 21, at 9:30 p.m. $10 to $12. 203-789-8281 and cafenine.com.
