The inventive sound of artistic defiance

San Francisco's eclectic noise act Xiu Xiu played an hourlong show before a sold-out audience at the MFA.

Framing a performance within the conceptually charged environs of a museum lends even the most pedestrian of rock bands a certain Duchampian patina of artistry. For the eclectic San Francisco noise act Xiu Xiu, whose explosive performance on Friday at the Museum of Fine Arts delighted a sold-out, creatively be-sneakered crowd, no such contextual piggybacking was required.

The four-piece band, which spent an hour torturing atonal cacophony and wildly inventive sounds out of the kitchen-sink setup, may well have supplied each member of the audience with an "ART"-engraved mallet with which to keep time on their skulls, although it wouldn't have been easy to keep up with drummer Ches Smith, a tornado of flailing limbs spindling, mutilating, and manipulating his tricked-out kit. Meanwhile, the band laid down dissonant melody lines of bowed string stabs and keyboard pyrotechnics. Whether it sounded more like corny theatrical effects or the world-changing collision of tectonic plates depended on your tolerance for the avant-garde.

Vocally, the tempered quiet and blustery caterwauling of songs from the band's recent "Women As Lovers" were striking and gorgeous. Switching between two voices like stepping on an effects pedal, the musically bipolar Jamie Stewart moved from morose, whispered introspection to a torrent of violent upheaval. Detours into a sort of operatic camp style were mercifully brief.

A third dynamic found the band ripping through variations of British post-punk style, bass and rhythm bounce only slightly obscured by their incessant tinkering. A careful parsing of the songs' layers might have revealed Stewart's bridled sense of song craft, and even - gasp! - a hook or two. Perhaps Stewart's Bauhaus T-shirt was meant to serve more as a statement of purpose than fashion.

The overall effect was that of a nervous waking dream. Dreams are, of course, disjointed and non-linear by nature, but the bold artistic defiance of Xiu Xiu gave voice and shape to that nightmarish void.

The charming and charismatic Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down couldn't have provided a sunnier juxtaposition with their immensely likable set of jangly hand-clap pop buoyed by Nguyen's plangent vocals and affable star quality.