LANEGAN: One half of a dynamic vocal duo.

For those of us born in the late '70s and early '80s, the era of grunge will forever hold a special place in our hearts. Those days of adolescence and early adulthood will always contain a soundtrack of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. It's difficult for many of us to let this era dissolve into obscurity, and rightfully so, but perhaps there is a time and place for everything. That time might have come during last Wednesday's Gutter Twins (a cooperative effort between Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli and Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan) set at the Beachland Ballroom. The Gutter Twins' music, while brand new, was nostalgic to a fault, and not at all endearing, something made all the more apparent when you looked around the half-full room of patrons now in their late 20s and early 30s.

It was strange too, as the music on the Gutter Twins' debut album, Saturnalia, sounds relevant. It's dark and brooding, eerie and mysterious. But live, with cigarette smoke wafting from the stage, and dark shades of red and blue covering it, the grunge-era retread rang dated and hollow. Sure, Dulli's voice is still strong despite his constant smoking, and Lanegan, who reinvented himself with Belle & Sebastian's Isobel Campbell on 2006's Ballad of the Broken Seas, is one hell of a driving force. But as the pair's set unfolded, it seemed out of place today.

That's not to say the music was poorly played or received. Dulli and Lanegan definitely make for a dynamic vocal duo, with Dulli providing the main melody and Lanegan ramming it through like a charging bull, as they did fine at the start of the set on "Station" and "God's Children." But even with five very competent musicians rounding out the band, by mid-set the entire presentation, instrumentation and vocals just sounded tired. "Idle Hands," the band's first single, with its devilish intro and segues, didn't help the cause either, and by the time the encore rolled around, the Gutter Twins seemed compelled to unleash songs from the duo's other project, the Twilight Singers, including "Papillon" and "King Only." The songs partially excited the crowd, but it was all a bit too revivalist for nearly everyone's taste.

Vic Chesnutt, Jonathan Richman

Grog Shop, Monday, March 10

Last weekend's blizzard didn't affect the turnout or the generally high spirits of the crowd at Monday night's early show at the Grog. The venue was only filled to half capacity when Vic Chesnutt took the stage at 8:30 p.m. Hailing from Athens, Georgia, Chesnutt is a first-rate songwriter and stageman whose lyrics have a homey, Southern gothic feel to them. He opened his set with a newer track from his last album, North Star Destroyer, which dwells on the current political climate: "Well you strung up Saddam Hussein/ Then like a toreador just step away." The crowd had a mixed reaction to Chesnutt's sparse, rambling song style. Some in the audience were clearly rapt, sitting Indian-style in front of the stage, while others were jonesing a little hard for Jonathan Richman's looser, more upbeat style. "Can you play something metal?" inquired a crowd member. "Well," Chesnutt replied after ruminating for a few seconds, "I've got a song called "Fuck You.'" One of the real delights during Chesnutt's set was an older number called "Sewing Machine," a tender yet strangely ominous musing on Chesnutt's childhood.

Jonathan Richman took the stage a little after 9, and the size of the audience had ballooned accordingly. I'm an avid crowd- watcher, but there was no over-representation of any certain age demographic, clique or gender. The only thing most had in common was their giddy enthusiasm for Richman's music. Richman got his set started right with a song about "Stupendous miserable cities..." to which all that had weathered the roads that night could clearly relate to. Richman is also a premier performer, though there's a bit more camp and flash to his showmanship. He covered a wide assortment of favorites from his extensive catalogue, even some tracks from the popular There's Something About Mary soundtrack. The real crowd favorite of the evening was "I Was Dancing at the Lesbian Bar," which got even the stodgiest concertgoer two-stepping in place. - Emily Anderson

Fu Manchu

Peabody's, Friday, March 14

There was a time when these slacker/surfer dudes were all the rage and were even wooed by major labels at industry schmooze-athons like South by Southwest. Those days are long gone, but the band's soldiered on and, judging by this terrific show, hasn't lost a step. Taking the stage amidst a flurry of feedback and noise (which actually seemed to be quite intentional), the band quickly cranked the amps to 11 and got the crowd going with incendiary versions of "California Crossing" and "Mongoose," staples in a repertoire that now spans well over a decade. The stop-and-go lurch of "Hung Out to Dry" showed just how well the band could vary the tempo and concluded with a psychedelic jam that sounded like something it cooked up over a weekend of dropping acid in the Sonora Desert. Singer-guitarist Scott Hill, the band's one constant over the years, kept interaction with the audience to a minimum, offering the occasional "thank ya'll very much for coming out tonight" before launching into the dirge "Shake It Loose" and then following it up with the sly "Weird Beard." The show almost came to a screeching halt when the guys thought they blew an amp, but after a brief lull, things got back on track and the set concluded with the anthem "King of the Road." A two-song encore included a sinister version of "Pigeon Toe."

Openers Burning Brides are a power trio that often evoked Nirvana more than the Melvins, and their hour-long set featured a good number of songs the band said would be out on a forthcoming album. The group's high energy approach and positive attitude (it gave a shout-out to local college radio station WRUW for spinning its tunes) went over well with the testosterone-filled crowd that was clearly there to see the much heavier Fu Manchu, something not lost on wiry singer-guitarist Dimitri Coats, who observed, "What the fuck is in the water here? I would not want to fight any one of you," which the crowd rightly took as a compliment. - Jeff Niesel