Evangelista

Brutal and expulsive, resonant with sparking eruptions of guitar blurt and looping, spaced-out drones that could score a nightmare in a David Lynch movie, Hello, Voyager holds nothing back. The brainstorm of former Geraldine Fibbers frontwoman Carla Bozulich, the debut album from her group Evangelista follows a 2006 solo effort with the same assortment of musicians, and limns a similarly surreal soundscape.

The Los Angeles–based Bozulich is an OG California punk kid—she first recorded for the Minutemen’s New Alliance label back in 1982, when she was 18—and a prolific writer, performer and visual artist whose message often untangles from the gnarled limbs of a gothic squall. Her latest effort, in league with members of the Montreal out-rock collective Thee Silver Mt. Zion and others, conflates dark ecstasies of expression with turbulent jams that feel like exorcisms. Amazingly, Bozulich can compress a complex concept, such as “The Truth is Dark Like Outer Space” into less than three minutes, though the album builds to a titular, 12-minute closer that can easily be imagined as a performance art piece.

Restless and imaginative, this combo resists easy formats: The tone can shift radically into noirlike jazz vocalese (“Lucky, Lucky Luck”) and disturbing chamber music (“For the L’il Dudes”). Bozulich challenges listeners to engage this music on her terms, but there’s no chance they’ll compare her to anyone else.

Evangelista plays Schubas Thursday 10 and South Union Arts Friday 11.