23

SUNDAY

Boston’s Push Kings’ debut is somewhat anachronistic in that it’s an in-your-face pop-vocal record. The two singers’ voices are turned way up because…well, because you’re only young once and might as well sing about it, right? Like the Style Council, the PKs exist in a fictional cafe universe. It’s all girls, raincoats, and “European Dreams,” but dreams can be quite a gas sometimes. The band owes a small debt to the Rough Trade and K outfits of yesteryear in paving the way for simple rhythms to become hip. The focus is on the vocal abilities of brothers Carrick and Finn Gerety, where it should be presently, we are invited to wonder what may develop in time. Sometimes the Geretys sing like McCartneys (the squarer one, yes), and they’re refreshingly unencumbered by angst. Tonight offers pretty straightforward kinda-retro pop, by turns soulful and saccharine, that never quite rocks but is an antidote of sorts to jaded urban existence. With Claudine at 9:30 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1831 14th St. NW. $3. (202) 667-7960. (John Dugan)