Pop Music Reviews : Celebrity Skin Puts On Its Looney-Toon Face

Celebrity Skin is a pop music trash compactor. Revisiting (and reinventing) an absurdist, theatrical brand of glitzy-glam rock, the loony-toon quintet seemed to point to its influences by opening its Thursday night Whisky set with a rollicking version of Spark’s “This Town Isn’t Big Enough for Both of Us,” and ending with a shot of ABBA’s “S.O.S.”

But any attempt to decipher the mentality (or lack thereof) behind Skin’s giddy poperatics quickly breaks down before the group’s three-ring Circus-of-Hell assault. Amid more stops, shifts and breaks than a driver’s ed. examination, ex-Germs/45 Grave drummer Don Bolles wailed falsetto harmonies behind vocalist Gary Jacoby (dressed to overkill in liederhosen, Tyrolean hat, Mickey Mouse gloves and sequined platform shoes), as twin guitars squealed Sweet-ish melodies on hippity-hoppity originals like “Sweet Fisted Nanny” and “Monkey Brains.”

The controlled chaos of the band’s careening, sloppy performance belied the accomplished musicianship here. But with too many of its songs eventually mushing into the same hyper blur, Skin seemed like an amusement-park attraction that, after its initial exciting rush, becomes just another ride.

There’s nothing small about openers Pigmy Love Circus, a greasy juggernaut of beer-bellied dudes cranking tight and nasty scrunge-rock at full scream. There was a lot of humor, though, in the band’s affinity for Teutonic chants that had the quintet sounding like mutant trolls from the Black Forest.