Bygone Shows

Their highly economical alt-pop is equally gripping and catchy. In performance, the songs remain intact structurally, but are hurled at the audience with an ass-kicking vigor.

- The Bollard

Metal Feathers is slightly disheveled by design. Lobley originally toyed with the idea of forming a band of non-musicians; later, he considered having musicians play instruments unfamiliar to them. He wanted to impose limitations or impediments on the group — and on himself as a songwriter — to yield more direct, unkempt music. In the end, he plays his trusty blue Jazzmaster, and his brother, Derek, plays his “usual” instrument, keyboards, but the essence of the original idea survives.

The stubble is most evident in the rhythm section. Jason Rogers — highly regarded as the guitarist, songwriter, and frontman of Diamond Sharp — plays forceful, deliberate, mostly unadorned bass parts. Yet it may be Althea Pajak, a talented rock-and-roll rookie, who best embodies the spirit of Metal Feathers. Her non-traditional drum kit — a bass drum flipped on its side and struck with a stick; a snare; a cymbal; a permanently closed high-hat and a mounted tambourine — is more than just a symbol of the band’s bargain-basement approach. Pajak’s embrace of this modified kit traces a line back through Heather Lewis of Beat Happening to the Velvets’ Moe Tucker.