D4 gets by on punk conviction, energy

The revolution will not be compromised. Not by D4, a quartet of New Zealand punk-rock scholars devoted to music that is sweaty, loud and pure.

The new garage-rock movement was built for them, a place to pile up jagged riffs and frantic vocals against a desperate rock beat. At the Troubadour on Tuesday, the band performed barely 50 minutes of quick punk tunes, drawing on the rich, shambling history of Johnny Thunders and other infamous underground loser-heroes. Songs began and ended abruptly, lots of them, with barely a pause between.

The explosive rock patterns and sudden Townshend leaps of lead guitarist Dion would have fit right into the MO of the MC5 and other hard-rocking revolutionaries. And singer-guitarist Jimmy Christmas, with his Blondie T-shirt and fuzzy muttonchops, wailed behind the microphone like a raw nerve.

The songwriting on the band’s upcoming album, “6Twenty,” is a little thin. That’s no small weakness for any band in any genre. Even an underground act without pretensions and an uncertain commercial future needs a recognizable anthem, a “Kick Out the Jams” or “Hate to Say I Told You So.”

But D4 still gets across on sheer force and twitchy punk conviction, not unlike the late Thunders himself. “Come On” and “Running on Empty” weren’t pop tunes as much as steady bursts of bad, rad attitude.