POP MUSIC REVIEW : Nymphs: Hard Act to Swallow

In seeing the Nymphs perform at the Coach House Saturday night, it easily was evident why singer Inger Lorre is more famed for what goes down her throat then for what comes out of it.

Ms. Lorre, you may recall, is the artiste who eats a cup o’ maggots in the group’s most recent video, afterward declaring, “I’ve had lots worse in my mouth.” While no one seemed to doubt that statement--this is, after all, the woman who urinated on the desk of a Geffen Records executive and who performed oral sex on a fellow while on stage at a Garden Grove nightspot a couple of weeks ago.

Since then, predictably, Lorre has been griping that everyone’s paying attention to her acts instead of to her music. Since the only outrage on stage Saturday simply was how lame her group is, a more germane concern might be whether she can sing at all, which doesn’t especially seem to be the case.

Though the sore throat of which she complained may have contributed to her raspy yowl, it wouldn’t excuse her landing far off-pitch a goodsome lot of the time, or being emotionally inarticulate, scarcely conveying even the mono-thematic “life is void” message of her music.

In the Nymphs’ 40-minute set (about as long as they kept the audience waiting before going on), there was nothing to place them apart from the roughly 2,009 other “post-apocalyptic” bands mewling out their tired Angst on the L.A. scene. There certainly isn’t anything new to the Nymphs’ sound, which seems the result of tossing Black Sabbath and Patti Smith into a blender and turning the talent knob all the way down.

Where there was a poetry to Smith’s early nihilism (which was 17 years ago, Inger, so why not try something new?), Lorre’s lyrics read a bit more like a typing exercise:

I’m damned, I’m damned and I’m so sad.

I’m damned, I’m damned and I’m so sad.

I’m damned, I’m damned and I’m so sad.

This is from the craftily titled “Sad and Damned,” a song on which, it should be noted, Lorre had some outside help with the lyrics.

The group seemed capable of a modicum of cohesive playing on its debut album of last year, “Nymphs,” but live, the four musicians sounded like Bad Acid Night at the Fillmore, bringing an I’ve-got-barbecue-mittens-on finesse to their music. Lead guitarist Jet created a nonstop string-thrash and feedback whine, which was (a) oh-so-very-expressive of the inner turmoils of 20th-Century life, and (b) exactly the same ego-wank noise that any novice 14-year-old could make with a big “dad’s money” amplifier.

Supported by this grinding Moloch-with-a-toothache backing, Lorre capered and rolled about the stage in a shiny beetle-black latex outfit and feather boa. The songs she sang included “Wasting My Days” (sample lyric: “I’m gonna drop out of the human race”), “Heaven” (“I really hate the sun for shining today”), “Cold” (“That’s right, my heart is cold, cold, cold”) and “The Highway,” her Jim Morrison-like musing on whether Richard Ramirez might be a good kisser.

About the most radical thing Lorre did during the performance was voice her support for Jerry Brown, which should pretty well cinch the nomination for Clinton.

The largely male audience didn’t give the impression that it necessarily had come to hear the group’s music: There was only a smattering of applause throughout the show, and virtually no call for an encore until the Nymphs’ road crew whipped up a drizzle of response.

Then, while the band played a Sabbath riff, Lorre wandered out on an upstairs ledge--possibly thinking “Revolt! Anarchy!”--until she realized that it was a bit of a drop, and--possibly then thinking “I’m really about as radical as Jim Morrison’s bathtub ring”--she clumsily climbed down to the safety of a roadie’s shoulders. She finally made it on stage for a lackluster version of “Sad and Damned.”

Given the old box of sodden fireworks that is the Nymphs, perhaps some savvy manager soon will realize what it takes to be a truly post-apocalyptic band, and will just prop real corpses up on stage with some feedbacking guitars. It could only be an improvement musically, and they wouldn’t have to look far for maggots when it came time to shoot a video.