Also this issue: Blast Off Rocket from the Tombs relaunches. -Sam Adams Cash Back Rosanne Cash writes the Rules and rediscovers her voice. -Nicole Pensiero Blistered in the Sun Unwrapping the Summer Package Tour -Jesse Delaney There are heroes in the seaweed -Patrick Rapa Kim Richey -Sam Adams Creekside Jamboree -Sean O’Neal Tim Berne's Big Satan -Kyle Parker Amy Rigby -Sam Adams

June 5-11, 2003

musicpicks

Ssion

In Philly terms, the five-piece, chicken dinner that is Brooklyn's Ssion (pronounced "shun") are like Book of Love meets Walkie Talkies meets Need New Body -- a rickety, raucous, dirty, primal, screaming new wavey dance act that sounds all jittery and cartoonish. The music from the soon-to-be-released Opportunity Bless My Soul (Version City) -- is made visual in all its vexing and vicious glory on the VHS-only I Don't Want New Wave and I Don't Want The Truth. It also helps that the band occasionally wears feathered chicken outfits. Mainly though, the Kentucky girls and New York boys take cues from The B-52's with their charmed Southern screams mingling uneasily with chunky metal guitars and off-kilter hyper-rhythms. And despite their oddball antics and songs like "Anorexia Rules, OK!" "Narcotics for the People" and "Get AIDS Off a Toilet Seat," there's nothing funny about their dirtball excursions. At least not ha-ha funny. They take the Sugar Town showcase stage this Saturday, with Lehigh Valley-ites The Tunics starring singer/keyboardist Stephanie Nelson, head of that day's Philadelphia Dyke March.

Sat., June 7, 8 p.m., $7, 21+, with The Tunics, Falkor and the Sugar Town DJs, The Balcony at the Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-LIVE.

—A.D. Amorosi