BY JUD COST

It's about time rock 'n' roll had a pretty girl who plays the guitar like Neil Young. Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, looking sharp in a low-cut fuzzy sweater and what might have been a buckskin skirt, wrung every bit of emotion she could out of her six-string electric, including some abrasive moments that would have done the young J. Mascis or Bob Mould proud.  But it was the howling Crazy Horse in her that opened people's eyes tonight, contrasted with her sweet, Christine Perfect-like vocals. I hadn't seen long blonde hair bent over a guitar like that since the early '70s heyday of Alice Cooper and Status Quo.

Ably abetted by her co-conspirator, the ambidextrous Andy Stack hammered away at a standard drum kit with his right hand while playing a small array of electric keyboards with his left-and tattooing the kick drum like an ADHD 5th grader anticipating recess. Too bad the guy couldn't play the pedal steel at the same time with his knees to help replicate Wye Oak's excellent new album The Knot (Merge). If the band doesn't work out, Stack could always catch on as one of those double-jointed vegetable-slicer salesmen on the county-fair circuit.

"We have some Baltimoreans with us here tonight," beamed Wasner, encouraging the boisterous contingent in attendance from their home town. "Hope nobody gets murdered tonight. We like to murder people, in Baltimore, don't we?" she added. The only mayhem perpetrated this evening was Wye Oak's premeditated death by guitar. And no jury would ever convict them.

Portland's heroic, folk-rocking sextet Blitzen Trapper headlined the show with a powerful, three-guitar assault that felt, at times, like a full-blown return to the golden days of the hippie ballroom circuit. "San Fran-fuckin'-cisco!"  was all guitarist Marty Marquis, looking like a frizzy, redheaded Buddy Holly, had to say to establish instant rapport with the local mob.

Blitzen Trapper's 2008 LP Furr (Sub Pop) was a real eye-opener, but the hardworking outfit sounded even better than they had warming up Oakland's cavernous Fox Theater for their Seattle pals Fleet Foxes just last April. At times tonight, it felt like the howling sound the Trappers made was creating an uncontrollable sandstorm, blowing over the head of the gyrating crowd, chased by lightshow lightning bolts from above.

As is the case these days with Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold, Blitzen Trapper singer/guitarist Eric Earley (who looks like a young Harry Dean Stanton) accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica rack in a solo mini-set, just to get some exquisite Dylan-like numbers off his chest. But it wasn't  long before the guitar stew-best exemplified on Furr's ear-singeing "War On Machines"-was on the boil again, as enthralling as the exploits of an Iraqi War bomb-disposal squad.

Since the always skimpy parking situation in the Divisadero neighborhood has now been made all but untenable by concrete road-construction barricades that occupy the few parking spaces that might have been, I had to split to rescue the car from an early-closing downtown garage before the boys wrapped things up. But it's comforting to know there will be another two-seat Blitzen Trapper 6-cylinder roadster, running on vegetable oil, waiting for me somewhere in the very near future.

[Blitzen Trapper photo by Jade Harris]