Festooned in feather boas, red, white and blue, Shoney Lamar & The Equal Rights hosted a barnburner on Friday, May 22nd at Boston bar-cum-nightclub, Church, also known as the sole place in Beantown offering bacon-infused vodka nightly.  Pork/liquor admixtures are, of course, “special occasion only” (unless you have arteries the size of storm drains) and the band rose to the occasion, dishing out savory helpings of new songs from their forthcoming album, Revenge of the Narrator.  The album ushers the best-kept-secret, paid-dues duo of Shoney Lamar (guitar, vocals) and Slow Train Carter (bass) into the more mainstream and infinitely more marketable package of the indie-rock foursome, adding members Pretty Fingers (guitar) and Chris Peck (drums).  Aside from the marketing and nicknames, the four-piece cooked; the music- a hard-boiled, bastard-child of southern rock and rust-belt blues with a psychedelic finish- lit up the stage like the summer’s first wildfire, burning a white-hot hole in an otherwise lackluster lineup.

As a duo, the strength of Shoney Lamar and Slow Train has always been the righteous, raucous alternation between quieter, more reflective numbers like “Don’t Drink and Draw” and louder, hell-raising dance numbers like “Freedom Fries”.  The two-man sets play out like a macrocosm of the venerable and venerated Loud/Quiet/Loud of Pixies fame.

As SLatER, the band strikes a more even keel, trading high-contrast transitions for more sustained explorations into the psychic underbelly of booze and blues.  New material like “Careless” and “Escape from the Practice Space” showcased the chemistry and chops of the ensemble; riffs unfurled, flexed and tensed, like oiled muscles with Motor City discipline; snares exploded; and all the while the steady hand of Slow Train kept the dance floor moving.  Of special note was the genre-busting “Rise of the Insects” a kind of dirty, Delta-style shout-out that takes you back to the real origin of rap: Bukka White & Co.  When the Equal Rights fires on all cylinders, the acerbic, skinned-cat drawl of Shoney Lamar is unleashed like an angry pit bull, waxing grandiloquent in all its ludicrous glory: a permanent call to madness and Mardi Gras.

The old staple, “Please Accept My Blues” closed out the set, and, as suddenly as Shoney Lamar and the Equal Rights appeared, they disappeared; packing up their gear and stealing away into the summer night like a traveling circus with a secret agenda.  Gypsy Cab and Daisy Chane rounded out the bill, and featured a decided lack of feather boas.