PWRFL Power

Kazutaka Nomura is probably not a guy you want to solicit for small-talk or pickup tips. He goes by the stage name PWRFL Power (a handle that inadvertently brings to mind Northeast whimsy-merchants Little Wings, who released an album titled Soft Pow'r last year) and bangs away solo on acoustic guitars while babbling on about self-actualization, pets, girls, and how one is never too old to learn how to play the drums. To the world at large, Nomura's broken-English, man-child folk shtick will register as buffoonery or mental instability; to the K Records faithful and fellow travelers, it might as well be PCP-laced catnip. Actually, if you can embrace or look beyond rhetoric like "Let me teach you how to hold chopsticks/My dad used to beat me up because I was holding them wrong/And I don't wanna beat you up because you're so pretty," his searching, lithe fretwork figures are their own graceful, delicate, callused-fingertips reward. Self-Evident headlines. With Capillary Action and the Yoleus.
Sat., March 1, 9 p.m., 2008