The Muffs still pack an energetic punch

Muffs bandleader Kim Shattuck is a die-hard rock ‘n’ roller. When the Glendale resident hits the Satellite’s bandstand on Friday night, she’ll bring bales of the masterly combination of rabble rousing, stink-stirring and bubblegum pop in overdrive sound that’s kept the band a popular international force for almost a quarter of a century.

Reemerging after a lengthy self-imposed exile with “Whoop Dee Doo,” a terrifically tuff and characteristically daffy new album, the Muffs, a close knit trio of thrill-hurling provocateurs, have perfected fabulously crunchy pop style. “I really can’t categorize the Muffs music,” Shattuck said. “But, say, when relatives ask, ‘What does your band sound like?’ I tell them, ‘We sound kind of like the Kinks and the Mersey Beat bands from the mid-’60s, but we are super obnoxious, I scream my head off, we all go crazy. It is melodic, the guitar has a good edge with plenty of feedback.”

That, indeed, nicely sums it up; the songs all come across as completely genuine and are all loaded with an appealing mantle of blunt simplicity and rumpled sincerity. Shattuck’s throaty, growling vocals effortlessly sells each lyric with disarming ragamuffin teen-dream veracity, and the messages are equally, and delightfully, low-brow. “Cheezy,” her reflection on a failed romance exemplifies the approach: “I would like to strangle you or punch you in the face . . . because you’re cheezier than you know.”

Shattuck made her rockin’ bones in the ’80s with infamous garage rock shock troupe the Pandoras, an all-female Los Angeles group led by the snarling, provocative sex kitten Paula Pierce. Barely out of her teens, Shattuck toured extensively with the controversial outfit, but the alliance was cut short by internecine disputes leading to Shattuck’s departure in late 1990 (within months of the split, Pierce tragically succumbed to a fatal brain aneurysm).

It was on a late-’80s Pandoras tour that Shattuck first met longtime Muffs cohort Ronnie Barnett, an atypical, slightly daft, highly creative bassist who became her ideal creative foil. “Ronnie is very unusual guy,” Shattuck said. “I met when was in the Pandoras in Austin, Texas. It was after a show and this lady had just come and really chewed me out about the song lyrics and how we were setting women back. Ronnie came up and asked me for an autograph. He was just the antithesis of this crazy lady and he was so sweet. We became pen pals and eventually he came out from Texas and we hooked up.”

Formed in 1991, the Muffs, thanks to Shattuck’s aggressive, sassy persona (“Paula was an influence on me — that type A personality, that brutal attack”), her distinctive, brawny guitar style and with plenty of irresistibly catchy, original songs, almost immediately got serious traction in Los Angeles’ rock clubs; Warner Bros. Records released their debut album in 1993, and by the following year, they settled into their permanent lineup of Shattuck, Barnett and drummer Roy McDonald (who is also a member of Redd Kross).

The Muffs are a completely self-propelled, self-managed beast and answer to no one but themselves and actively eschew anything phony. “People get sucked into being so show-bizy,” Shattuck said. “I mean this is show biz, but I just can’t do anything that’s not in my DNA.

“I write almost everything we do, I produce the records and I constantly battle my own perfectionism issues, which is why the recordings take so long,” she said. “I am a perfectionist and the only reason why I started producing is because I didn’t want to argue with a producer. I’m not that good at it but I do it.”

Few bands enjoy that kind of autonomy and artistic control, and while the Muffs shrewdly exploit that advantage, it tends to leave the fans hanging, for years, between releases. “The whole idea of doing an album is overwhelming sometimes,” she said. “But, I get inspired when I get inspired and that’s when it flows easily. I did have a big lull, but suddenly a bunch of these songs all came out — I was on a roll and I love being on a roll! Sitting there with a recorder, scratching on the guitar and it just gets better and better.”

Shattuck’s ingrained take-no-prisoner attitude has seen her through a few recent rough spots; a prestigious 2013 stint filling in as touring bassist for revered indie rock spearheads the Pixies afforded Shattuck an even higher profile but ultimately fell apart when the band, rankled by her show-stopping live presentation, abruptly fired her. This roughly coincided with a polarizing effort, by several former Pandoras, to posthumously resurrect the Pandoras, forcing Shattuck to confront a weird concurrent double whammy of rock ‘n’ roll politics.

“I was out with the Pixies in Europe and I started getting these emails from some of the [former Pandoras] girls saying that some of others were starting ‘the 21st Century Pandoras’ and that they wanted to make the Pandoras a ‘brand,’ and how creepy they thought it was. There was all this weird drama back home. My Pandoras buddies and I were cracking up.”

A minor tribal war between camps broke out, and after the Pixies ousted Shattuck, each side began threatening to revive the band. “I just didn’t get it, all the unnecessary drama, but I was getting together with the girls and jamming a little bit and we were making fun of them, which I suppose constitutes a passive-aggressive form of hate. I don’t hate anybody. I think some of the Pixies hate me, but I don’t hate any of them!”

For Shattuck, ultimately, it’s all about the Muffs, and suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous rock ‘n’ roll fortune doesn’t bother her a bit.

“I’m just not dainty,” she said. “I am really bad at being dainty.”

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What: The Muffs, with Summer Twins, Inger Lorre.

Where: The Satellite, 1717 Silver Lake Blvd.

When: Friday, January 16, 9 p.m.

Tickets: $15.

More info: (323) 661-4380, thesatellitela.com
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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.