Stitching together a rag-bag of mismatched musical scraps similar to their fellow Brooklynites Dirty Projectors and TV on the Radio — ’90s radio R&B, fragmentary art-rock, girl-group doo-wop, stiff-limbed no-wave funk — but coming up with a whole different sort of quilt, screwball septet Ava Luna spend the eight tracks and just over half an hour of their fairly blindsiding debut LP Ice Level (Infinite Best) endeavoring to derail just about any expectations you might have considered developing. Spazz-out synth-soul? Purple punk-prog? It’s bracing, bewildering, compelling stuff, a twitchy, unruly noisefield shot through with honeyed crooning and dense patches of groove, and laced up with the half-cornball, half-unhinged, wholly sincere soulman stylings of frontman Carlos Hernandez.
Wed., Aug. 8, 9 p.m., $10, with Banned Books and Auctioneer, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.
