Gay Beast

With time signatures that would stymie your average graphing calculator and a singular talent for crafting multi-rhythmic noise-pop miniatures that sway and swoon like a popsicle-stick sculpture, local three-piece Gay Beast have hewed from the living mountain of the Minneapolis music community a strange, beautifully ornamented cavern for themselves. It's a complicated time, this jilted age, and after a workweek of listening to Bob Seeger and Grand Funk at your line-cook gig, two-part harmonies in four-four just don't have a prayer when Saturday rolls around. The Yoleus, playing second of four, fit this show like fingerless gloves fit Neil Pert. In the musical Pangea, the Yoleus are Antarctia. Their songs are bold explorations, and their flummoxing guitar lines and rolling drum work are the handpicks and lifelines that keep them trudging forth. It's some vast territory they've chosen, but they always make it back and they've never lost a man. With Paper Mice, Whitesands/Badlands. 21+.
Sat., Aug. 9, 9 p.m., 2008