POP MUSIC REVIEW : Congo Norvell’s Affecting Artiness

Los Angeles band Congo Norvell makes music that, like its name, is full of mystery and clashing images of the primal and the sophisticated. And in the dark, semi-subterranean cabaret of the new Luna Park club in West Hollywood--where the band is doing a residency each Wednesday this month--it’s found a perfect environment to showcase its ambitious and affectingly arty songs.

Fronted by guitarist Kid Congo Powers, an alum of the Gun Club and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, and full-throated, Texas-bred singer Sally Norvell, this week the group wrung as much drama as possible Wednesday from a spare guitar-piano-bass-percussion setup. Cave’s mini-operas are the most obvious antecedent, but where he plays the Elmer Gantry moralist, Norvell is the seductress--her rich, elastic voice part Shirley Bassey siren, part Ann-Margret coquette.

In a brief opening set, Norvell, accompanied just by pianist Kristian Hoffman, veered between the sacred and the sultry with a casual mix of standards and seasonal numbers (a medley of “O, Holy Night” and “Mean to Me”!). But that was nothing compared to the contrasts in the full band’s set. With a crescendo-laden, Deco-delic blend evoking both ‘20s Berlin and ‘60s London, its moods skipped quickly between despair and hope, certainty and madness--oddly archaic in one way, yet in another just as clear a mirror of our times as Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Congo Norvell’s Luna Park engagement ends next Wednesday, this time with stand-up bassist Mary Mullen opening with her own gracefully poetic solo material.