Mission's more accomplished than ever

Local art-punk darlings Mission of Burma showed they're no novelty reunion act during a vital, sonically mesmerizing two hour-plus set at Avalon Saturday night. Having emerged from a 20-year retirement with live shows in 2002, the band is supporting a new album, "ONoffON," released this month, and a decision to do limited touring and write new material. The show indicated the group is likely to reinspire longtime fans and woo new ones, as the players bashed and finessed through songs with mischievous verve.

Appearing positively gleeful, original drummer Peter Prescott, guitarist Roger Miller (wearing oversize ear protectors due to tinnitus), and bassist Clint Conley, who clowned playfully for the band members' kids, watching nearby, seemed freshly impassioned as they pitted delicate melodies against dissonant, feedback-fuzzed punk. With Bob Weston replacing original member Martin Swope to add provocative tape loops from offstage, the band doesn't sound quite as revolutionary as it once did, but that's largely because so many bands have followed its lead. And it still throws down deliciously edgy music.

The set was loose but never unfocused, even as the group sprinkled in classics amidst the recent material. New songs sounded like Burma made bigger, with even more sophisticated use of the band's familiar blend of engaging vocal hooks and gracefully gritty guitar, anchored by sultry bass lines and rhythmically intricate drumming. The trancelike "Falling" featured guest vocalist Tanya Donelly, and the driving rocker "Wounded World" boasted a meaty guitar hook, intense clipped vocals, and soaring cello and violin provided by two guests Conley dubbed "The Lower Allston Philharmonic." The musicians could also be controlled and elegant, as on the guitar-rippled ballad "Prepared."

That said, the old songs are still classics, and the crowd cheered the brutally scratchy slide guitar of "This Is Not a Photograph," the stuttering beat and infectious vocals of "Academy Fight Song," and the razor guitar and dark, driving chorus of "That's When I Reach for My Revolver."

Returning for two encores, the band ended with the impassioned, guitar-scrawled drive of the new song "Class War."

Local cabaret-punk duo the Dresden Dolls delivered a dramatic set of off-kilter rock waltzes, layered with resonant keyboard and Amanda Palmer's dynamic, deeply emotive vocals over spry drums. Sunburned Hand of the Man, a local 10-piece art-rock collective, opened with a shambling set of wacky experimentalism.

Mission of Burma
With the Dresden Dolls, Sunburned Hand of the Man

At: Avalon, Saturday night