Photo courtesy of Jinners.com.

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Most conversations I've had about the band Knife Skills inevitably result in someone giving the nod to their perfect name. Even if Knife Skills were a Foghat cover band, they would still garner cred for having such a goddamned excellent moniker. If the band consisted of three privileged, white, suburban, frat boys jumping around on stage in blackface trading raps about the tribulations of the inner city, their name might be enough to save them from the guillotine. It is seldom in the dreck-ravaged modern musical landscape that a band with a cool name like Knife Skills will actually deliver on the quality end of things. Name and image are the meat and potatoes in the porkbarrel politics of NYC rock -- or all rock for that matter. From what I have seen, Knife Skills are unequipped with Foghat covers and they don't rap. These two big pluses and the great name are a good start. But what else has this band got to rend their auspicious beginnings from the jaws of the hungry drosspile of rock and roll oblivion?

On a sub-tropically oppressive night downtown, it's cool and clear inside Sin-e thanks to air-conditioning and fascistic smoking bans. There is a moderate crowd of rock kids in here tonight holding $3 cans of Pabst like gamblers hold racing forms at Belmont. Fon-Lin Nyeu stands stage left wearing a bass; black, high-top Converse and a denim mini-skirt. Anna Barie has a skirt that finishes just below her knees and black, old lady pumps. She's wearing a yellow Long Lost T-shirt that clashes with the drab-yellow of her Japanese Strat copy. She looks like a school marm hell-bent for destruction.

I have seen these two before. They used to be in a band called Thoroughbred. I saw them in a previous incarnation of Knife Skills at Ivy South about a month ago. While the Ivy South show displayed a band with good ideas and energy, they were corrupted by some sort of inner incompatibility. Knife Skills' latest drummer Jerry Fuchs (moonlighting from his normal metier as the drummer for Turing Machine) has knitted concentration on his brow but he has no problem navigating the songs. He adds strength and confidence to the band. Fon-Lin and Anna are umpteen times better with someone solid behind the kit. Although he's just visiting for now, Fuch's drumming finds its home effortlessly in Knife Skills' music. Plus he's cute, rounding out a threesome who in addition to their rock stylings are, incidentally, not at all difficult to look at. But I digress into the superficial. Ah, fuck it, it's all superficial anyway.

Looking deeper, you're helpless to decipher exactly what Barie is singing about amidst her ragged and jaunty guitar playing. But she provides her listeners with micro-introductions here and there as to what the songs are about. She covers a bevy of topics ranging from libidinous lust to Mormon fundamentalism. Knife Skills are not a complicated band. But it's a complicated world and Anna seems to want to address the complexities. The songs are hectic. Barie's jagged guitar lines comprise the center and the structures are adventuresome yet simple, while the mood is purely visceral.

"If this isn't desperation, I don't know what is."

Anna half screams, half whispers during "Our Summer of Teenage Lust". Her ragged barks intermingle with sultry half-spoken crooning. The desperation in her voice belies the nonchalance of the expression on her face. If she's desperate, she's used to it. She rocks out with measured aggression. Her static up-picking guitar style and tone demand attention. She's relentless on vicious guitar tone that utters forth without the help of effects or the ubiquitous stompboxes forever at the feet of modern rock guitarists. In front of me I can see two male guitarheads turn to each other and nod their heads in approval of Barie's riffage.

Nyeu attacks the songs with vocal interjections that compliment Barie. The singers don't harmonize and they don't want or need to. Nyeu takes center stage and sings "Keep Me Busy". The restless way that she delivers it says that she's wanted to sing it for a long time. Knife Skills songs are varied in style. There's no one-trick-pony here.

So what do they sound like? They sound like something between the MC5 and the Jackson 5. They sound like butterflies thrashing menacing wings. They sound like kids in trouble. They sound like danger. They sound good. Your doing yourself a disservice if you miss the next show.