POP MUSIC REVIEW : Buzzin’ ‘Birds

When there’s no keyboard in sight, just a row of fretboards lined up next to the drum riser, you know you’re in for a Guitar Band. This durable, alternative-rock subgenre got a slight twist at the Whisky on Tuesday from the Hummingbirds, who are from Sydney, Australia.

Not that the two-man, two-woman outfit stands far apart from such U.S. brethren as Let’s Active, the dB’s and the Feelies. The ‘birds’ debut album “Love Buzz” was produced by power-pop guru Mitch Easter, and on stage they displayed the same allegiance to ‘60s pop values, a punk-inspired intensity, and a fondness for making their guitars buzz, squeal, roar, ring, jangle, shimmer, chop, rattle, whoosh and sometimes play a tune.

Few of the solos were conventionally musical; mainly, they were intensifying exchanges of percussive charges, or racing strums that took them into the realm of pure rhythm. They also offered some into-the-breach heroics, a bit of Television’s lock-step design--but not much showmanship.