Experimental Punk Band Goes Unplugged In SF

One of the longest running experimental-punk outfits in the Bay Area, Oxbow has gone from clearing rooms in the '90s with it's squalling, abrasive music and the disturbing, sometimes confrontational onstage performance of singer Eugene Robinson to become an acclaimed mainstay on San Francisco's fringe music scene.

Robinson first collaborated with Oxbow guitarist and main musical arranger Niko Wenner when he joined the singer's artrock-meets-hardcore band Whipping Boy in time to contribute to the group's final full album The Third Secret of Fatima in 1985. The far more unconventional Oxbow began strictly as a recording project late in the decade. Former Whipping Boy drummer Dan Adams switched to bass for the band while drumming chores were split by Greg Davis and Tom Dobrov (Davis would take over full time in 1993 after Dobrov's departure).

Formed around the concept of musical freedom with no commercial aspirations, Oxbow mixed elements of noise rock that echoed Nick Cave's early band the Birthday Party and NYC sonic extremists Swans as well as such diverse inspirations as blues (in Wenner's screaming, dive-bombing bottleneck solos), dissonant modern classical, punk and metal. The cacophonous musical bed was matched by Robinson's wailing, unhinged delivery of multi-tracked vocals that sound like avant-garde singer Diamanda Galas channeling the right Reverend Al Green.

The band's dense and challenging early albums found a core of fans drawn to the extremism of the music, including noted recording engineer and Big Black/Shellac guitarist Steve Albini who would help track Oxbow's even more ambitious efforts, 1995's Let Me Be a Woman and 1997's cinematic Serenade in Red. The latter album featured a guest spot from UK chanteuse Marianne Faithful on a harrowing cover of Willie Dixon's "Insane Asylum."

Since the turn of the millennium, Oxbow has only issued two proper studio albums -- An Evil Heat in 2002 on Neurot Records and the conceptual opus The Narcotic Story on Hydra Head -- but the group also branched out into film with the release of the tour documentary Music For Adults. The film followed a 2002 Oxbow tour through Europe and some of Robinson's more physical confrontations with concertgoers who decided to test out his reputation for brawling (the MMA-trained singer would publish an acclaimed first-hand account of his exploration of combat, Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About A**-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your A** Kicked for Asking, in 2007).

More recently, the band has been at work on their long-awaited forthcoming album The Thin Black Duke (the band's first new effort in nearly a decade), but Oxbow has also delved into a variety of configurations, performing as an acoustic quartet as well as a stripped-down duo of just Wenner and Robinson. The pair has also toured Europe and played Birmingham, England's 2012 Supersonic Festival backed by a full chamber ensemble billed as the Oxbow Orchestra. While the now-completed The Thin Black Duke is scheduled for a November relase, the band has recently launched a GoFundMe campaign to help recoup some of the $40,000 Oxbow members have spent during the past ten years of recording the album.

The group made a rare SF appearance at Brick and Mortar Music Hall last June, but this special show at Mission District performance space the Lab Saturday night promises to be even more unusual as the quartet unplugs for a completely acoustic performance with Adams switching from electric fretless bass to cello. The group will be joined by Oakland-based electro-noise duo Black Spirituals.

Oxbow
Saturday, April 16, 8 p.m. $12-$18
The Lab