POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Eleven Fires It Up at Whisky

Los Angeles rock trio Eleven doesn’t quite crank it up to its namesake numerical level by Spinal Tap standards. But in the world of power-pop, in which it falls by virtue of song-craft, the band is almost off the scale.

At the Whisky on Monday, sharing a bill with the New York band Eve’s Plum, Eleven was totally unfettered by the musical manners that define the likes of the Posies or Teenage Fanclub. Riding on modal riffs, tortured, Lennonesque melodies and Alain Johannes’ inventive guitar vocabulary, the set was a dense, neo-psychedelic flow of power and fire.

Johannes’ dazzling dexterity was matched by keyboardist Natasha Shneider and thundering drummer Jack Irons. Neither Johannes nor Shneider is a dynamic singer, but each delivers personal, poetic imagery with a sense of yearning and reach. On all counts, Eleven seems as if it’s always pushing itself one level higher.

That sense was missing from Eve’s Plum’s set, in which the quartet’s eclectic rambunctiousness merely seemed ill-defined. Singer Colleen Fitzpatrick is a dynamo, both vocally (part Benatar belt, part Wendy O. Williams rasp) and physically (hyperactive go-go action). But after a while her gyrations seemed affected, while her don’t-mess-with-me stance devolved into brattiness.