Pop Music Review : Voluptuous Horror Twists Out Some Cracked Fun

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black is as twisted and enterprising as its name suggests. With up to nine members on stage at once, the New York performance-art-meets-rock group plays hard-edged new wave with a glammy twist, while a cast of mainly topless females in Kabuki-style face paint does routines around crude props.

Thursday at the Whisky, the G-string-clad performers’ matted wigs and blackened teeth gave them the appearance of decomposing centerfolds, but inside the context of the whole show, the display came off as original and entertaining rather than sensational or gratuitous.

Singer and leader Kembra Pfahler sang like an underdeveloped Exene Cervenka, while in between songs she chatted with the crowd in the same campy and exaggerated tones of Elvira.

Pfahler and a little evil-looking bat girl (this troupe’s equivalent to Blind Melon’s bee-girl) ripped Kleenex out of holders to the beat of one song, while the band banged out its bumpy pop. A series of colorful props--painted cardboard cutouts of bathtubs, ocean waves and ladybug wings--gave the sweet and enthusiastic feel of a school play.

More inviting than confrontational, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black offers cracked fun in an often dark and tortured realm.