MUSIC .

Rainer Maria

Fri., Dec. 15, 8 p.m., $12, First Unitarian Church.


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Published: Dec 13, 2006

rock/pop/obit

Ten summers ago, the poetry club kids shelved their lit-mag dreams and took off for a more secure career in indie rock. For the most part, they've kept the drama in the music, rather than in their bio; Caithlin De Marrais (bass) and Kyle Fischer (guitar) uncoupled a few years ago, but they and drummer William Kuehn stuck together for the band's entire run. Now Rainer Maria's splitting up, a few years past their prime, and their farewell lap is limited to Philly and New York.

Their first EP is a discordant mess, with Fischer and De Marrais screeching lousy lines through lousier microphones. "Rain Yr Hand" stands up as the least sexy song ever written about a couple of 17-year-olds hooking up after a rock show. Thankfully, they got better in a hurry. "Tinfoil" provides 1997's Past Worn Searching with a forceful opening line and the first of many postal allusions, and subsequent tracks showed Fischer and De Marrais getting a handle on quiet-loud dynamics. If emo ever had a chance of working when the boy not only still had the girl but also shared his band with her, this was it.

But as De Marrais gained courage and control of her voice, Fischer was relegated to occasional vocals, and then less than that. Instead of stepping all over one another's lyrics on 2001's Look Now Look Again, she chases him with her bass and he snares her with spiraling guitar; on Catastrophe Keeps Us Together, released earlier this year, they sound completely detached. Guilty pleasures of the Catholic kind enlivened 2003's Long Knives Drawn (sensual songs like "The Imperatives" and "Ears Ring" point toward monasteries and Mary) but Catastrophe is oddly tensionless. Without her old foil, De Marrais is essentially in charge; must be time to make that solo record. All urgency is gone, all insecurities smoothed over. It's kind of prosaic.

Fri., Dec. 15, 8 p.m., $12, First Unitarian Church, 22nd and Chestnut sts., 866-468-7619, www.r5productions.com.