There had been rumors all week that the opening act for The Black Water CD party would be something different. I got to the Bottleneck early just in case the rumors were true and was not disappointed. CRUSE: electronic dance/pop, heavily layered keys and drum tracks, ReGina Cruse's remarkable, sometimes Siouxsie-esque voice dripping with well-crafted effects, and Brad Koehler winding his way through the prerecorded maelstrom with additional keyboards. I've stopped listening to most electronic music. Too many people bought synthesizers and found they could make really cool noises with two fingers. What sets CRUSE apart is that the music starts with intelligent composition and technology brings the songs to life. Effects and multi-tracking are not used to replace the song-writing process, they are a tool employed brilliantly to achieve a compelling sound. The songs are so polished they glitter. It's always difficult to review songs at a first hearing, but "Home" is one of the most seductive pieces I've heard this year, and CRUSE's covers of the theme from "Wonder Woman" and the Bauhaus classic "Bela Lugosi's Dead" are eerie and remarkable. Catch them before they get snapped up and shipped out to one of the coasts.

[For more information about CRUSE, see their interview in The Zone.]

The boys in The Black Water know how to put on a show. The Bottleneck stage featured a massive, back-lit white sheet, more white sheets covering amps and monitors, and the amazing figure of Brent, head shaved and face painted, wearing a white slip. It wasn't exactly one of those Victoria's Secrets jobs -- more like Lane Bryant, but he looked great. Swirling fans and blue lights as Shaun spoke. "Good evening. This is `Train, Man, Drunk'." And The Black Water began to play all the songs from their new CD, in order. At first I thought this was a bad idea. CDs and live shows are different beasts. They pulled it off because `Train, Man, Drunk' is a lot more than an arbitrary collection of songs. It's a complete work. A few years ago it might have been called a "concept album", but fortunately it lacks the pretention that such a description usually suggests.

I've seen The Black Water a lot over the last eighteen months and was expecting to sit back at the Bottleneck and enjoy their show. A bit like watching "Casablanca" on AMC -- the comfort of familiarity. Sure enough, the set started with recognizable patterns, the fight between Shaun's Jaguar and Terry's howling Sheraton, the bedrock provided by Brent's fretless bass and Brian's drums providing the foundation. But something else was going on. Maybe it was the surreality of a Marshal amp sprouting from the white sheets like a mushroom in snow, or the strange real-time painting of the back drop by Tyson [a fifth member of the band for this evening], or, more likely, the boys just love their new material. They were more focussed, driving, committed than I'd ever seen them before. They were having fun. I couldn't take my eyes off them. And they *should* believe in `Train, Man, Drunk.' "Driver" is melodically beautiful and menacing, "Blood on the Door" keeps threatening to break into a dance rhythm and then shifts into Jim Morrison on a relatively sober afternoon, and "Fuck" is powered by a hypnotic bassline, unexpected chord changes, and guitar and drum interplay reminiscent of Magazine's second album. I'd heard some of this material before, but never in this context. It was made more compelling by much greater dynamic shifts than The Black Water have used at other shows. This made the performance for me. The gothic moodiness is great, but it is much more effective when it's interspersed with a few measures of violent cacophony.

`Train, Man, Drunk' is a great CD. The Black Water gave it the perfect send-off at The Bottleneck. But I'm still not sure if I should've clapped after each song. It seemed somehow like an interruption: applause between the movements of a symphony.