Gig: Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds with Martin Savage and the Jiggerz!

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Following the April 19 release of That Delicious Vice, and just back from a wildly successful tour of Australia, Kid Congo & The PInk Monkey Birds today announce additional live shows for this Summer/Fall. Kid was also part of the “Old Punks” Focus Group with Fred Armisen and a wealth of other punk legends on a recently-aired episode of John Mulaney’s Everybody’s In LA.

 “It’s a new lineup,” landlord of the avant-garage Kid Congo Powers exclaims of the Pink Monkey Birds edition responsible for the fifth studio full-length of their 19-year recording career, That Delicious Vice, released April 19 on In The Red Records, the band’s home since 2009. “We’ve gone from a four piece to a three piece,” continues Kid, whose unique guitar style has been at the center of some of the most forward-thinking bands in punk and garage: The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Knoxville Girls, to name a handful.

“Because Mark Cisneros (Des Demonas, Hammered Hulls) is playing guitar, sometimes we have songs with two guitars. And then sometimes, he plays bass on a bass six [i.e. — the electric bass version of the mariachi instrument, the bajo sexto]. So, that is a new development. We lost a member and decided to try to do it as a three piece — more space, you know?”

Ron Miller remains on drums, percussion and vocals.

“I’m not sure if living in the desert is making me want more space in music or not,” laughs Kid, a Tucson resident for a few years now. “Maybe I’m turning into a desert stoner rocker. But I’m not a stoner, so that’s not happening.”

No, the former Brian Tristan is most decidedly not unleashing a Kyuss tribute album. But you hear the desert all over That Delicious Vice, beginning with opening instrumental “East Of East,” its Duane Eddy/Rowland S. Howard guitar twanging through some malicious reverb. You feel it in the slide guitar-drenched theme from an imaginary western, “Silver For My Sister,” which echoes the pioneering Los Angeles blues punk band Kid formed with Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club. There’s also such unique pieces as the acid/garage cumbia title track, translated into Spanish at least for its name, “Ese Vicio Delicioso.” As he tells the tale of his musical journey over the Pink Monkey Birds’ cowbell-thumping Latinate rhythms, Kid’s thickly distorted guitar groans and screams with feedback, likely a conscious sonic homage to Jimi Hendrix, namechecked in the lyrics.