Pop Reviews : A Supersuckers Sound at Bogart’s

While everybody talks about bands moving to Seattle and getting in on the world-famous grunge thing, the Tucson-bred Supersuckers are the first ones that actually went there from outside and prospered enough to win a Sub Pop recording contract and a few paragraphs in Rolling Stone. Supersuckers play that early punk-rock thing done 15 years ago by bands like the Weirdos, Bags and Dead Boys, but filtered through the hooky, fuzz-tone Seattle vibe and salted with the off-key massed choruses familiar from Mudhoney albums. Supersuckers’ newest record, “Smoke of Hell,” sounds like it was recorded for about $12 and change but is irresistible anyway.

At Bogart’s on Friday, Supersuckers were clean and tight and on . The obligatory Blue Cheer/ Sonics-style ‘60s-punk pop songs seem to be the Seattle equivalent of the compulsory school figures in Olympic figure-skating competition, and Supersuckers scored pretty high, if not up to Nirvana’s perfect 10; the ‘70s-punk songs fared better. Where their records churn more or less generically, Friday there was a definite Supersuckers sound--blocky power chords and pogo tempos, spare guitar leads, half-crooned vocals, corny rockabilly drumming--and the band swarmed as if the stage could not contain it.