What a town without pity can do … for us

In the beginning, Elvis hips and Jagger lips drove the kids wild. They drove preachers and PTAs even wilder, and they responded with vinyl-burning pogroms and fire-and-brimstone sermons about the decline of Western civilization.

Ettes front woman Lindsay “Coco” Hames will do anything to please you.

They feared what a Catholic cardinal at the time called the “steady, primitive beat synchronized with the body’s natural rhythms,” which could “literally hypnotize the unsuspecting listener.” That, they hypothesized, made them easy prey for that era’s Axis of Evil: Reds, reefer and Lucifer.

Somehow society survived, and those primal beats and rhythms became the gold standard for quality rock ‘n’ roll.

Los Angeles’ The Ettes are testament to its staying power.

Recently feted by national music glossies Magnet (which picked them as their “Band to Watch”) and Harp, The Ettes are a two-gal/one-guy trio playing no-nonsense, pretension-free rock in two- and three-minute nuggets of fuzzed-out garage bliss. It’s loud and aroused, and informed by early Kinks, Stones and Stooges grit, as well as by Phil Spector’s girl bands, Patsy Cline and Nancy Sinatra vocals, and modern-day revivalists like the White Stripes.

“It’s just really good rock ‘n’ roll that a lot of people don’t bother themselves with now,” front woman and guitarist Lindsay “Coco” Hames says—not about The Ettes, but about one of the band’s heroes, Asheville rockers Reigning Sound. Still, her praise could easily serve as self-description.

Hames formed The Ettes in 2004 in Los Angeles, where an awful lot of dreams go to die. But the three East Coast émigrés—Hames, bassist Jem Cohen and drummer Maria “Poni” Silver—bonded immediately when they discovered their shared interests amid the city’s fractured music scene.

“In L.A., we don’t really fit in with the prevailing style,” Hames reveals by cell phone before the band’s Chicago gig. “Only recently have we started to feel like anybody even knows that we’re there.”

It’s no shock, then, that the band went elsewhere to record the follow-up to Eat the Night, which wasn’t much more than a set of demos recorded at a fellow Angeleno’s home. Wanting to capture the same unadulterated sonic punch that their influences had in common, The Ettes shot high, e-mailing White Stripes and Billy Childish producer Liam Watson. After hearing their demos, Watson agreed—even though the band had no record deal in hand (the finished product was eventually snapped up by Sympathy for the Record Industry).

“He was at the top of our list,” says Hames, “but we thought there was no way. We were shocked and thrilled that he agreed to work with us.”

So The Ettes self-financed their way to London and Watson’s Toe Rag studio, where they recorded the incandescent and aptly named Shake the Dust. Inspired by Watson’s sonic skills and the homemade studio’s renowned vintage gear, the band emerged with a 34-minute, 14-song firecracker that Harp praised for its “primal timeliness.”

“Reputation” opens the record like a nitro-fueled funny car, establishing The Ettes’ signature talent for merging eras into fresh hybrids: a rush of Ramones chords and Iggy-tude supplemented by a jet-engine roar mid-way through. The fetching Hames is all sexy snarl and alley-cat growl, a woman scorned but fiercely empowered; when she warns “you’ll get what’s coming to you,” you’ll pity the fool clueless enough to cross her. “Spend My Money” and “Alright” feature the band at their delirium-inducing fuzziest, Hames’ beloved Telecaster knock-off joining Cohen’s body-rumbling bass and Silver’s drums to pummel listeners into welcome submission.

Throughout, Hames is a volcanic mix of vulnerable hurt and tough-as-nails determination. “If it all goes according to my plan/ I’ll have you eating from the palm of my hand,” she sings on “Gimme,” calling to mind a fed-up Belinda Carlisle. On the emotional flip side is the stunning “Soft Focus,” a reverb-and-organ lament where Hames acknowledges that she’ll “do anything to please you/ because you know how much I need you.”

“The record is about washing your hands of certain things,” Hames offers.

“I Wanna Go Home,” an album highlight, is a Jesus & Mary Chain-meets-the-Runaways mash-up whose only shortcoming is that it doesn’t go on forever. The record closes with a Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood-like shuffle whose ‘60s vibe seems perfectly suited to the London surroundings it was recorded in.

During their London stay, the band booked a couple of spur-of-the-moment gigs and got their Brit-feet wet. Watson also took them to see two of their more talented garage-rock peers, ex-Childish collaborator Holly Golightly and Jack White amigos The Greenhornes. Hames left impressed.

“I like them because it seems like a natural thing—this is just what these people play when they get together,” she says. “You can always tell when people are trying too hard, or trying to sound like something they’re not.”

The Ettes learned from their London sojourn and subsequent tours across the States that there is indeed a community of like-minded rockers—they just don’t happen to call L.A. home. Add the West Coast’s notoriously long hauls between gigs, and The Ettes are ready to relocate. Could Asheville, just up the road from Hames’ parents’ Brevard home and where she went to summer camp, be in the mix?

“We’ve got a couple places in mind,” she says coyly.

One thing you can count on: Wherever The Ettes land, that town’s gonna rock harder as a result. 

[John Schacht is a freelance writer and contributor to Harp magazine.]

The Ettes play Joli Rouge (130 College St.) on Sunday, March 11, with Fractured Eye. 10 p.m. $5. 350-1660.