Lafayette isn’t exactly known as a hotbed for progressive music. For hot-potato zydeco breakdowns, sure; for hot boudin purchased roadside in a grease-stained paper bag, most definitely. Brass Bed has no use for your washboard solos and preconceived notions. Its weapons of choice are a choppy White Album piano and a warbling frontman — the former supported by various six-strings and a wandering pedal steel, the latter by a quartet of doo-woppers that wisely shirked the barbershop in favor of the Blue Moon Saloon. “BBC Midnight Broadcast,” the leadoff song from April’s self-released Midnight Matinee, unfolds like a funeral in time-lapse photography, its reverse-heartbeat kick drum slowed to cardiac-arrest mode while a sweetly orchestrated accompaniment quickly comes and goes. It’s all just a setup for the sunset, however: a streaking, 45-second flash of mournful brass before putting the whole thing to bed.
Brass Bed plays the Circle Bar with Gold & Glass tomorrow, July 19, at 10 p.m.