From the GUTS

For a band whose singer sounds like she wants to rip off your face and run it over with her bike a few dozen times, the members of Baby Guts are surprisingly laid-back. Take, for instance, their reaction when Pizza Lucé in Duluth made them change their name because someone there thought it was offensive.

"We went on as Infant Courage, which is really what Baby Guts means," singer/guitarist Laura Larson said, sounding semiapologetic about the moniker but unwilling to change it.

"It puts us right behind Babes in Toyland in the record stores!" she cheerfully noted.

As for the Lucé gig, bassist Taylor Motari injected, "We didn't care. We got some free pizza out of it. We'd have performed as Van Halen if it got us free pizza."

Baby Guts has endured comparisons to all kinds of bands besides Van Halen since hitting the ground running with last year's well-received Guilt Ridden Pop debut, "Gasoline." Their quick ascent continues with a second CD, "The Kissing Disease," which they're promoting Thursday at 7th Street Entry.

Instead of pretending they invented rock 'n' roll all on their own, as many bands their age do, these kids even trumpet their influences -- from one of the most mainstream inspirations a modern-rock band can have, Nirvana, to some of the most obvious ones for a band with a screaming frontwoman.

"We're not a Riot Grrrl band per se," Larson, 22, said while hanging out on the front porch of the Uptown house where Baby Guts has hosted several basement parties (shhhh!). "But we're definitely influenced by those ideals and the Riot Grrrl bands -- Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear, Bratmobile."

Larson would have fit in any of those groups, not just because of her guttural, cord-shredding voice, which recently earned her an unlikely nod as best female vocalist in City Pages. She also shows the kind of uneasy balance those bands had between staunch feminism and a playful rock 'n' roll attitude. As she's breathlessly screaming her way through "Firetruck Vagina," one of the new album's highlights, you can picture the smile on her face.

Still, the comparison might seem funny for a group that's 15 years too young for the Riot Grrrl movement and two-thirds male (drummer Rob Goswitz joined soon after "Gasoline" was recorded). Even the guys in Baby Guts are cool with that, though.

"I like being in a band with a female vocalist who's not trying to be the usual, cute-girl kind of singer," said Motari, 24. "I was heavily influenced by L7, Seven Year Bitch, Sleater-Kinney -- any female-fronted band that was a little angsty or pissed. You know, I'm pissed off about a lot of things, too."

Motari and Larson are friends from Burnsville High School. Just as they're not too stuck up to deny their musical influences, they're also not too cool for their old school.

"At least Burnsville, of all the suburbs, has a decent-sized group of alternative/goth/skater/whatever kids," Motari said. "It wasn't like we were the only ones into our kind of music or we were outcasts, any of those clichés."

The pair credited Burnsville's city-funded under-ages club the Garage for giving them a jump-start as musicians in various short-lived bands. They formed Baby Guts three years ago around the time they moved to Minneapolis. Even within the oh-so-hip confines of Minneapolis, though, Larson and Motari weren't sure if their roaring, firebrand sound would be accepted.

"We were pretty surprised 'Gasoline' was so well-received, because people do sort of react negatively to angry music nowadays -- especially a female singer being angry," Larson said. "It was nice to know there's still people out there who like this kind of music."

To follow up "Gasoline," Baby Guts let their Nirvana fascination lead them down to Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, where "In Utero" was made. Hardly looking for a more polished sound, the band tore through its new album's 14 songs in just two days, coming off with something closer to Nirvana's "Bleach."

From the 1 1/2-minute opener "Bad Mouth" to the 3 1/2-minute closer (the longest track on the album), "The Kissing Disease" grinds, twists, pounds and punches its way through a mountain of pent-up angst and frustration, tempered with just enough subtle bits of pop to soften the blows.

"I wanted to put more melody into this record," Larson said. "I really like the catharsis of screaming through an entire song, but I think it pays off better if it's incorporated with a little melody."

"Plus," she added, "it's hard to keep screaming in every song."

Helio yeah! Colin Johnson of Vampire Hands used the word "breathtaking" to describe last weekend's fifth annual Heliotrope Festival at the Ritz Theater (part of Art-a-Whirl in northeast Minneapolis), and by the end of the second night, I was in full agreement.

Vampire Hands was one reason. The subversive fringe rockers enlisted four extra drummers for the fest (as if the two already in the band weren't enough). Skoal Kodiak was another, as the bleach-bottle-rocking trio brought half the crowd onstage to dance during its set.

The wildest highlight was the brief but unforgettable, mobile set by White Map, a duo featuring ex-Low bassist Zak Sally on drums and Noise Quean Ant's Scott Brown on some kind of weird, battery-operated, air-blowing device that looked like a cross between an old gramophone and a weed-whacker and sounded like an electrified didgeridoo.

The real star of Heliotrope, though, was the rugged but vibrant Ritz Theater, on the same block as the 331 Club but mostly a mystery to music fans. Both Dan Luedtke of Gay Beast and Nate Kranz of First Avenue were late because they went to the wrong old theaters. Here's hoping the music scene can get to know the Ritz a little better.

Cities light up There's no kind of loneliness like city life, or at least that's what can be gathered from the eponymous debut EP by Small Cities. Founded by three small-town transplants with big harmonizing abilities, the trio enlisted Romantica frontman Ben Kyle to help with the evocative EP. Even with just four tracks, it shows a nice smattering of styles, from the Semisonic-poppy "Fargo" to the Andrew Bird-ian sound of "This City," a haunting downer with the refrain, "This city's grown bigger since you've been gone." Release party is tonight at the Turf Club with Fitzgerald (10 p.m., $5).

Random mix Another local radio blabber who's way too old and into Eddie Money to be discussing hip-hop, KTLK (101.3 FM) host Jason Lewis raised fans' ire by bashing local Hmong MC Tou Saiko Lee of Delicious Venom after Lee taught kids in a junior high school arts program. Another rapper, Kyle (El Guante) Myhre, wrote a fine rebuttal at CultureBully.com. ...

Mint Condition landed its first top 10 record since 1999's "Life's Aquarium" this week, as the new "e-Life" debuted at No. 8 on Billboard's hip-hop/R&B chart. And that's without the major-label support "Aquarium" had. ...

The Galleria rocks! Or at least it now offers live music at a reasonable volume that won't offend Pottery Barn shoppers. The regal Edina mall kicks off its summer music series Thursday with a semiacoustic gig by Tim Mahoney at Crave restaurant (6 p.m., free). The shows continue every Thursday at various locations with Dan Israel, the B-Team and Adam Levy among the players. ...

I didn't know this when I mentioned Afrifest last week, but there are now two different African festivals coming in August from organizers involved in the inaugural Afrifest last year. Rachel Joyce and Steve McClellan have splintered off to create the Twin Cities Pan African Festival, which will kick off Aug. 6 with a Cedar Cultural Center concert by Mali's Habib Koite and continue through Aug. 11 at various locations. Joyce said she split to maintain a fest that's strictly nonprofit and community-oriented.

chrisr@startribune.com • 612-673-4658