BUZZ BANDS

Hard rocker with a soft side

Behind the sheets of guitar and the anguished screams of Orange County hard-core rockers Thrice lay a folk singer, just waiting to show his roots. Or so Dustin Kensrue has revealed on his solo debut, “Please Come Home,” released this week.

“It’s a niche I hadn’t gone into yet,” the 26-year-old singer-guitarist says of his exploration of folk and blues. “They were obviously songs that didn’t feel like they would fit in with Thrice.”

Some of the material, which sounds as if it could have grown from the same sonic branches as Uncle Tupelo or Ryan Adams, dates back four years. He’d play the songs at parties and for friends, and “people kept encouraging me to put a record out,” he says.

So he and Thrice guitarist Teppei Teranishi burned the midnight oil after the band’s studio sessions in Orange to record “Please Come Home,” leaving the production comfortably rough-edged. The result is an album that would fit into Kensrue’s personal playlist -- the likes of Tom Waits, Yo La Tengo, Ryan Adams and Miles Davis.

“Thrice is known as a heavy band, but none of the guys in Thrice listens to heavy stuff anymore, at least not much,” he says. “I find myself lately listening to a lot of jazz or alt-country.”

Has the music (released digitally in December) been a hard sell for Thrice fans? “It seems to have gotten a good reaction so far,” says Kensrue, who plays two sold-out shows Saturday at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood. “Even people who were at first nonplused about it have come around.”

Punkers still wild but tamer

The fact that the ever-volatile scuzz-punkers Black Lips recorded their new live album in Tijuana says all you really need to know about the Atlanta-based four-piece. Known as much for the R-rated sex and violence of their live performances as for their seething T. Rex-inspired riffing, the band’s onstage lawlessness finally met its match in the mythically decadent border town.

“It was one of the craziest shows we’ve ever played,” vocalist and bassist Jared Swilley says. “We hired a mariachi band to play and they got [upset] by all the people throwing glass bottles. We had to keep slipping them money to stay onstage.”

The ensuing live album, “Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo,” is their first for their quite appropriate new label, Vice Records. Though their average age is around 22, band members have been honing their blistering and fever-dreamy brand of psychedelia since their teens. Swilley said they “didn’t go to college and don’t like having jobs,” so they became veterans of America’s basement dive circuit.

“We used to get banned from a lot of clubs,” said Swilley. “The management at the Knitting Factory wanted to jump us. But none of the bannings ever stand the test of time.”

Though tales of the band swapping bodily fluids onstage abound, they’ve lately toned down their antics. Despite their live-fast-die-young stage ethos, they want to stick around to enjoy their reputation.

“We played a show with this old soul guy who said he wanted to die onstage,” Swilley says. “I’m the same way myself. I go crazy if I spend more than two weeks at home.”

The Black Lips perform Friday at the Echo and Saturday at Spaceland.

Fast

forward

* Touts: Lavender Diamond plays tonight at Safari Sam’s, where on Friday night Veruca Salt headlines after openers Run Run Run and Hello Stranger.... The Clean Prophets join the Colour tonight for the final installment of the latter’s Spaceland residency.... Behind a powerful sophomore release “All This Time,” Ohio’s the Heartless Bastards visit the Knitting Factory tonight.... Cold War Kids play Spaceland on Friday; the quartet just announced a Feb. 21 date at the El Rey Theatre.... And on Wednesday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, there’s a benefit for drummer Wally Ingram (Sheryl Crow, Jackson Browne, David Lindley and a host of others). Ingram is suffering from throat cancer. Organized by Butch Vig, the concert features Garbage, the Martinis with Joey Santiago and David Lovering of the Pixies, Bonnie Raitt, Victoria Williams, Crow, Browne and others. Info: www.guacfund.org.

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-- Kevin Bronson and August Brown

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Recommended downloads

* Stream Dustin Kensrue’s “I Knew You Before” at www.myspace.com/dustinkensrue

* Download “Not a Problem” by the Black Lips at www.vicerecords.com/download/Black_Lips-Not_A_Problem.mp3

* Stream “All This Time” by the Heartless Bastards at www.myspace.com/heartlessbastards