From Washington state, the supergroup VALIS takes its name, appropriately, from Philip K. Dick's visionary final novel. It's an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, and although Dick was writing about an extraterrestrial eminence, the author's overstuffed imagination provided a suitable metaphor for the music heard at the Pic this evening. If the author was still alive, he might even accept the members of VALIS into his unhinged inner circle. Bassist Adrian Makins gave the audience an unthreatening personality they could identify with, but the rest of the band was a freak show. Drummer Sean Hollister looked like a pink-and-yellow version of Bub, the domesticated zombie from George Romero's Day of the Dead, right down to the lifeless-yet-searching eyes and the tongue that insistently poked out of his mouth like a black slug emerging from a drainpipe. There was a weird disconnect between his limber, expert playing and his apparent proximity to death. Guitarists Van and Patrick Conner, meanwhile, could have ridden into the bar on a pair of novelty tricycles. Presumably, Van Conner's pants represented the "vast" part of the active living intelligence system. He's a gigantic man but not the simmering thug he used to be. With almost two decades of great music behind him, he's avuncular and unselfconscious, and he moseyed on-stage about five minutes after the rest of his band, cracking wise, dropping cigarettes, demanding Jagermeister, and habitually pulling up those pants.

The band's set was similarly casual. There were false starts and endings that were sometimes indistinguishable from beginnings. None of this mattered, though, since the material is fabulous. There's a craftsmanship and personality to the songwriting that shouldn't surprise anybody who considers Conner and Hollister's former band, the Screaming Trees, to be criminally underrated. The midpoint of the set provided the highlight. "Voyager", from the new album, Head Full of Pills, is a soaring, orgiastic salute to NASA's deep-space probe. It's a ferocious number that brought out some fearless interplay between band members, and it gathered momentum as if it was actually powered by solar winds. That song melted into another Hawkwind variant, "Skylight Myrical", during which Hollister convulsed through an almost 10-minute drum solo. This is a magnificent band that has the right to take itself very seriously but doesn't.

Two local openers did some fine work pumping up the generous crowd, which eventually filled the dance floor. Mendozza plowed a more predictable stoner-rock furrow than the headliners, but the three-piece had muscle and volume, despite the unnecessary and obvious Kyuss cover toward the end of the set. Before that, the Belushis proved to be a tight rock 'n' soul combo that should find itself a horn section. Frontman Shawn Belushi—who looks more like Norm McDonald—distributed highballs and beers from a cooler and the attention-seeking bass player mugged a little too much, but the band is more than a novelty act; it's got some strong material and talent, notably in guitarist Gerry Belushi, whose tastefully raunchy playing was reminiscent of Ronnie Wood before the Stones made him wear oven mitts.

Georgia Straight, March 2005