POP MUSIC REVIEW : 1000 Mona Lisas Trio Paints Dark Images

The Los Angeles trio 1000 Mona Lisas makes music in the tradition of late-’70s L.A. punk. At the Whisky on Friday, that meant rough tunes with hidden pop melodies as subversive and catchy as ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll. On stage, the sheer force of their delivery erased some of that clarity, but for all the thrashing, feedback and testosterone, the band was still capable of some musical complexity, at its best falling stylistically somewhere between the Minutemen and Nirvana.

The band has earned some recent radio airplay with a frantic version of the Alanis Morissette hit “You Oughta Know,” which was played at the Whisky with a noodling, jazzbo intro and a thrashing payoff. Much of the Mona Lisas’ own material shared that song’s outrage, sarcasm and resignation.

Other songs were even darker, and some shattered completely under the weight of singer-guitarist Armando Prado’s intensity. At times during the hourlong set, the band coasted through solid if unspectacular punk. And the occasional one-minute thrashers were more like breaks in the action than expressive bursts of energy. But even those moments were usually redeemed with the polish of such quick pop-punk nuggets as “Maybe It’s All Forgotten.”

Second-billed Mr. Mirainga performed music that was rough and loose, mixing casual punk riffing with an interesting sense of rhythm that sometimes erupted with a Latin-Caribbean flourish.