Gun Club’s Pierce Runs Out of Ammo

In 1981 Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s Gun Club promised to be one of the more interesting tangents aiming out of the L.A. punk scene, with Pierce’s post-Morrison decay ‘n’ voodoo musings backed by a mutated white garage version of the blues. While hopelessly arty and infantile, Pierce was at least trying to arrive at something new. Eight years on though, Pierce has failed to arrive at a destination worth calling his own, and on Friday at Bogart’s he had evidently even given up on trying.

The return to the quartet of well-traveled guitarist Kid Congo Powers lent the 18-song set some atmospheric noise and grunge-riff sensibility. But Pierce seemed to be locked into the most constricting of punkoid conventions, with his vocals set apart only in their varying degrees of detached rage. He did achieve a workmanlike froth on “Fire of Love” and the moody “My Cousin Kim,” but overall it was like watching a junkie sweat for 80 minutes: It might have been “on the edge,” but it is an edge long since blunted by stasis and indifference.