POP REVIEW : Midwest Cows Are Moooving Up

Now that the hard-rockin’ indie thing has moved from the underground straight into the Top 10, and touring bands that were second-billed at Raji’s last time around are suddenly the objects of seven-figure major-label bidding wars, a thinking rock fan can’t be caught napping if he or she wants to be in on the Next Big Thing.

And just because the current crop of Next Big Things came from the stable of Seattle’s Sub Pop records doesn’t mean that the next Next Big Thing couldn’t come from the equally fine roster of obnoxious three-chord bands on Minneapolis’ Amphetamine Reptile label. One of the best--and most obnoxious--of the AmRep bands, Minneapolis’ semi-legendary Cows, played to a small audience of indie insiders and industry dudes at the Whisky on Thursday, and certainly qualified as the NBT of the week.

If Ron Howard had ever played a punk-rock singer in a John Waters movie, he might have looked a little like Cows frontman Shannon Selberg, rail-thin and shirtless with a Dali mustachio, constantly in motion, intense but slightly exaggerated in an actorly kind of way. The impression is of thoroughly corrupted wholesomeness, which somehow comes off more obscene than the many Hollywoodians who come out sleazy from the get-go.

And the Cows’ groove, though grungy and unkempt as that of any other band you could name, was propulsive and head-bangy, with an intricacy you might have associated more with early Philip Glass than with somebody like Halo of Flies. The Cows rocked in a way you may never have heard before.