New Faces

Gary Lucas and Jeff Buckley certainly couldn't create a more impressive avant-rock résumé. Lucas played guitar for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band during the group's early-Eighties period that yielded Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow. Buckley is the son of legendary jazz-folk-rock singer Tim Buckley, whose groundbreaking work was cut short by his untimely death from a drug overdose in 1975.
After working with Beefheart, Lucas kicked around, sitting in with groups like the Mekons and the Woodentops, while playing solo guitar gigs that were equal parts free jazz, psychedelic rock&roll and urban blues. Buckley, meanwhile, was living in Los Angeles, where he was working on demos. When the two met at a tribute to the elder Buckley at Brooklyn's place of art-rock worship, the Church at St. Ann's, they began writing together. Under the moniker Gods and Monsters, Lucas and Buckley now have a partnership (and a development deal with Imago Records) that churns out music that runs the gamut of rock's family tree - swirling energy that is a schizofrenic mix of psychedelic spinning, jazz improvisation and raw blues rambling.
The final Gods and Monsters lineup just might add an eighty-proof kick to the already immediate mix. After auditioning a number of rhythm sections, the two have roped in Golden Palominos maestro and drummer Anton Fier and Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone - the same pair who put the power in Bob Mould's touring power trio.