It’s easy to get spoiled by the amount of live music to be had in New York, but this triple bill at Baby’s All Right didn’t do much to impress at first. OCDPP, a group led by the dual guitar attack of Cassie Ramone (Vivan Girls) and OJ San Felipe (Xray Eyeballs), started off the night with what surely must have been one of their first outings. (Dee Dee of the Dum Dum Girls is reportedly also in the band, but it looked like her bandmate Sandra Vu behind the drums this night.) They started off directionless, the vocals and guitars of each of the initial few songs seemingly put forth with little purpose. However, they eventually got their shit together to churn out a few choice nuggets of distortion-fueled vitriol. The next band up, Future Punx, by contrast took no time in flipping the script. Catching me completely by surprise, they melded the best of influences from the new wave era (think Devo, Gary Numan, Talking Heads) with a distinct amount of their own collective personality. With guitarists Jake Pepper and Chris Pickering taking vocal turns, they blasted through a set that nevertheless seemed fresh in the face of the preceding rockish stuff.

The headliners for the evening, Chain and the Gang, were a departure from both of the openers. Gang leader Ian Svenonius has long devised a stage show part James Brown and part Iggy Pop, while at the same time his bands have fused a similar set of punk and other groovier influences. Chain and the Gang is no different and in many ways can be seen as an extension of his most notable group, The Make-Up. Dressed to the nines in matching striped suits, the quartet laid down a simple foundation of riffs, hooks, and beats on which for Ian to proselytize, howl, pant, moan, and yeah, even sing. But where The Make-Up once divined the gospel yeh-yeh, their term for their spirited reveries on sex, drugs, and rock & roll, with Chain and the Gang, Svenonius takes the position of cultural critic, ranting against modern contrivances like social media and mourning the loss of yesteryear’s ephemera.

Throughout the show, Svenonius was a whirling dervish, literally twisting and shouting as he flung himself about the stage. As such, he’s a showman like no other, and as with The Make-Up and before that with Nation of Ulysses, he conveys the kind of conviction that’s absent from the performances of today’s generation of rock hobbyists. However, inherit in the lyrics of songs like “Free Will,” as well as between-song sermons like the one against posting on Yelp that proceeded “Mum’s the Word,” is a certain amount of cheekiness, so it’s hard not to wonder if Ian’s become a little jaded. I tend to think it’s simply an extremely pointed method of ridicule, but there were definitely a few in the crowd on which this was lost. But for those who got it, this dichotomy of jibe and terse grooves made for a thoroughly enjoyable ending to the night.