Metal certainly hasn’t cornered the market on juvenile pomposity. Rock’s always been plenty self-indulgent and preposterous, making it a fine satirical target for Kyle Gass’s band Trainwreck. The glabrous half of Tenacious D, Gass inhabits a leather-vested, rug-sporting alter ego, Klip Calhoun, looking like a lost member of Toto. Trainwreck’s debut LP, The Wreckoning, skewers a variety of rock staples, from “The Drummer,” to latent homoeroticism (“Brodeo”) and over-the-top sexual innuendo (“Milk The Cobra”). Sonically it’s a grab-bag of classic/stadium-rock glyphs. Gass provides the fluttering flute à la Jethro Tull for “R.B.M.” aka Rock Boulder Mountain, “Brodeo” gets a cowbell-banging country-rock strut on, and their jazz-rock theme song sounds like a cross between Traffic and Santana. Though well executed, it never reaches the parodic levels of Tenacious D, probably in part because ‘70s rock is so dated and its elements so ingrained in musical culture that they’re hardly questioned.
Sun., March 7, 8 p.m., 2010
Sun., March 7, 8 p.m., 2010
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