The Orphics at the Whisky

Something kind of wicked this way comes. The Orphics are stranger and more exotic than most of the careerist bands clotting up the Sunset Strip these days, with songs that are more like epic journeys than bland, well-behaved pop tunes that can be neatly contained in a jukebox. Singer/accordionist Matt Roth aspires to the vaguely mystical, rambling classic rock of bands like the Doors, Led Zeppelin and Jane’s Addiction, and he layers the tracks on the Orphics’ recent CD, Purity, with violins, sitars, cellos, “psychedelic echoes, magic . . . and Middle Eastern scales.” The album’s centerpiece is “The Queen of the 7 Seas,” a febrile waltz where Roth croons with the world-weary voice of a lost sailor, sounding a lot like Cat Stevens or Richard Butler as he walks the plank, spellbound by an ocean muse. He finds himself spinning around on “The Carousel” at a macabre circus and is bound up in a swirling vortex of wah-wah guitar, sitars and his own seasick accordion on the somewhat pretentious “Horse Latitudes”–style intro to “Deliverance.” Although Roth’s grandiose ambitions fall flat on generic songs like “Pleasure Fucked Pain,” there are still enough hints of darkness and mystery here to make the Orphics’ “Midnight Freak Show” (which will include Porno for Pyros journeyman Peter DiStefano) one of the evening’s more weirdly unsettling Halloween events. (Falling James)