The first time pop music intersected with my sex life was at age 9.  Granted, my sex life at the time consisted of Smurfette, Princess Leia (but only the golden bikini version), and Jennifer Grey from Silver Spoons.  

She entered my television screen wearing more underwear than I’d ever seen on one person.  She wore white and sang about losing her innocence.  I didn’t know what that word meant.  (Later that summer, my mother would ask me what I thought a virgin was.  My answer: a wild bird.)  She sang the last chorus of the song on her back, writhing on the stage.  I remember being strangely transfixed to the 3 inches of flesh on her thigh, between her lace skirt and stockings.

I am of course referring to Madonna’s iconic 1984 MTV Video Music Award performance.  Although tame in comparison to the Nipplegate/celebrity-sex-tape deluge we live in today, Madonna’s honeymoon-before-the-wedding demonstration tore down the boundaries of censorship and television, catapulting her career as masturbatory fodder for millions of men.

Now, there are three kinds of sexy.  First, there is bombshell sexy where the physical beauty of the woman overwhelms anything and everything in the room. Then, there is girl-next-door sexy of the type popularized by Hugh Hefner.  These women are perky, bubbly, but obtainable.  Finally, there is the she-knows-more-than-you sexy, such that a woman possesses an unpredictable yet attractive personality where you have no idea what she is going to do next, good or bad.  Madonna wrote the book on this strategy.  Angelina Jolie, while also a bombshell, has also become an expert at this.  Maja Ivarsson, lead vocalist of The Sounds, is writing her own senior thesis.

On April 9 at State Theater, The Sounds unleashed a performance framed by the volatile allure of Ivarsson.  Riding the waning revival of new wave, they balanced upbeat synthesizers, three-note bass lines, skin-peeling guitars, and rasping lyrics of defiance, dance and denigration.  Arriving in the United States in 2003 as Swedish imports, The Sounds can be placed as cousins to The Hives and nieces to Abba on the Scandinavian pop music family tree.

There is an uncanny resemblance between Ivarsson and Deborah Harry of Blondie.  While Ivarsson’s platinum locks are Ashlee Simpson-esque, she possessed Harry’s defiant stare and waif-like innocence.  Even Ivarsson’s attire was circa 1979, commanding the stage in a sleeveless black mini with raised slits on each hip, showcasing her angular thighs.  However, physical features are where the similarities to Blondie’s front-woman end.  For one, Harry often moved in mellifluous, cat-like passes onstage, and her wispy voice redeemed the band for succumbing to the American disco era.  Ivarsson moved like she’s having rough sex, and her vocals were mostly guttural, less “Heart of Glass” and more “Call Me,” though with the volume turned to 11.

Though she’s physically diminutive in height, Ivarsson was a rock ‘n’ roll Norma Rae on “Song on a Mission.”  While belting out, “I got a 15-million-dollar contract coming my way, and without me you are nothing at all,” she sought to draw a line in the sand between the band and record executives.  Although a bit hypocritical considering the 30 hoodies for sale in the auditorium, Ivarsson laid down the axiom that The Sounds are not just a band, but a gang.  A gang with a guitarist sporting a pompadour and wife beater, backed by a bassist who may not realize he bares the same haircut as Dan Baird from Georgia Satellites … but a gang nonetheless.

On their latest record, Dying to Say This to You, they committed the same mistake as they did on their debut album Living in America, by completely neutering guitarist Felix Rodriguez.  Onstage, however, he is unmerciful with his playing and pounds each note into your ear with the inertia of a linebacker.  On both albums, he is lifeless, a cog in the machine where a studio guitarist could have stepped in and nobody would notice.  Similarly, Ivarsson’s sandpaper vocals are candy-coated to an almost prepubescent form on The Sounds’ albums.  Willing to split the difference between original new wave fans and the TRL set, New Line Records deprives the CD purchaser of the visceral live performance The Sounds are capable of churning out.