Sweden’s Leather Nun Makes Local Debut

On record, the members of Sweden’s Leather Nun sound like they grew up listening to the Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot.” Evoking the cool, mysterious and slightly sinister atmosphere of a smoky, subterranean dive, the quintet would appear to be right at home in L.A.’s neo-gloom ‘n’ glam club, Scream, where the Nun made its local debut Saturday night.

But what might be a radical rock attitude in Stockholm came off as a parody of Melrose Avenue chic here. In his leather cowboy drag and sunglasses, singer Jonas Almqvist, smoking and chewing gum at the same time, tried to affect a distanced, distaff persona. Despite his pop-perfect inflections, Almqvist was just another Lou Reed impersonator. This overriding normality often defeated clever attempts at defining darker psychic terrain; the infamous underground single “FFA” (about a notorious form of S & M sexuality) was given an overblown, pedestrian funkytown treatment, while the band’s best dirges (“Prime Mover”) paled besides routine rock-a-boogie riffing. Far from habit-forming, this Nun should be heard and not seen.