Noise is Golden

TO JUDGE BY its sullen, guitar-heavy sound, Brooklyn rockers Golden Triangle should fit the typical punkrocker mold: scuffed army boots and worn leather jackets, squatting in old factory buildings and showering in beer. Half retro oi-boys, half biker gang. And what you hear is what you get—almost.

Turns out Brooklyn produces a slightly different breed of hard-nosed rockers: namely, ones who have their shit together. Sure, the six members of Golden Triangle have a penchant for gritty urban environs and faded leather. But they also have conscientious eating habits (half the band is vegetarian), day jobs (as gallerists, store managers and visual artists) and—perhaps most importantly—a hardpartying master plan behind their ruckus.

“We just wanted to tour to Mardi Gras,” says vocalist and founding member Vashti Windish about the band’s genesis, “and hope that people wanted to party with us.”

Bassist Alix Brown and singer Carly Rabalais concur. “It wasn’t ever a serious project,” says Brown. “We wanted to play music and have fun,” agrees Rabalais. Along with Windish, the two were coworkers at the vintage store Beacon’s Closet, and lit upon the idea over drinks one night.With a vague but actionable desire to rock something— anything—down south, they set about assembling equipment and forming a band.

“We [had] a month to write songs,” remembers Windish, who says the first tunes they came up with were “crass and sludgy and crazy” because of the bandmates’ disparate levels of experience and musical taste.

But the sound was serendipitously suited to Mardi Gras, so having slapped some notes on paper, the ragtag crew hit the road.

Naming the band turned out to be the hard part. After some false starts, many of them food related (Mashed Potatoes, Dr. Pickle) and some of them less appetizing (Flesh Vegetable, Strawberry Handjob), the band settled on a more neutral option: Golden Triangle. Depending on whom you ask, the name refers to a ritzy swath of Los Angeles, a tourist-heavy region in India or the infamous opium-producing area in Southeast Asia.Windish says the name earns the band a lot of speculation (“Are you druggies?” being prime among them), but that opacity was part of its appeal—it didn’t have the specifity (or carnality) of some earlier options.

The New Orleans tour turned out to be a success—or at least showed the half-baked band that it had a future.The group played two shows at New Orleans’ infamous Circle Bar, and was heartened to see the crowd responding well. “There were people dancing,”Windish remembers fondly.

Those beery, slapdash origins would stick with Golden Triangle as it evolved from a loosely organized party band into a more focused, practiced outfit.The band’s never lost its sense of festivity, though; crammed with power chords and husky, incantory female tenors, its sophomore album Double Jointer still sounds as if it were composed for a Mardi Gras-style revel, albeit one with more porkpie hats and pendant necklaces than tank tops and plastic beads.

The extra rehearsal time has, however, made a healthy cosmetic difference for the band’s sound. “Everything comes together and melds a lot better than it used to,” says Brown. “It’s not so spastic and noisy; everything’s tighter, and we all worked so much better when we got together with [drummer Jay High].”

Even with its refinements, Golden Triangle is still a bit of a black sheep in the Brooklyn scene.To put it mildly, there just aren’t a whole lot of bands taking cues from The Misfits and The Cramps in areas like Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where most of the band members live and work. More and more, Golden Trian gle has to look outside the five boroughs to find like-minded musical acts; the band played recent shows alongside Atlas Sound and has an upcoming performance with Those Darlins, a country-punk outfit from Tennessee.

“Out of all the bands we play with, there aren’t enough to make a total scene,” says Windish. “I was trying to put a show together [recently] and I couldn’t think of anybody. I was like, ‘I just want a dirty, sludgy band—who?’ I don’t know! I can’t think of any bands like that. Except Women, but they can’t really play [here] very often.”

“Pop. 1280 is good, too,” chimes in guitarist O.J. San Felipe. “They’re a pretty wild bunch.”

Coming from a band that has dressed up like cavemen and covered itself in flour during live shows, “wild” is no small compliment. But Golden Triangle has had to scale back onstage antics at recent gigs.The problem, increasingly, is finding the time to fit in theatrics.

Whereas at first the band was all about going buck wild, it has to prioritize as it gets bigger.

“It used to be a lot heavier before,” says Windish. “[But] we’re so busy. Before we had more time to do crazy shit for every show, and now... we have to practice.”

> Golden Triangle

April 1, The Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave. (at Havemeyer St.), Brooklyn, 347-529-6696; 8, $10.