Abe Vigoda

Photograph: Dan Monick

South Street Seaport; Fri 11
The Yard; Sat 12
Mercury Lounge; Sun 13

Abe Vigoda hails from the energetic L.A. scene that gathers around the Smell, the club that famously nurtured No Age. Like that band, which headlines Friday’s Seaport show, this quartet has an admirably spastic quality missing from much contemporary punk. Skeleton is Abe Vigoda’s third album, yet it feels more youthful than most debut singles. The group resembles a strange child whose IQ may be in the 70s—or the 140s. One minute, the musicians’ competence seems highly questionable; the next, they have smuggled exotic guitars and rhythmic madness into a murky punk song. Abe Vigoda carries this ambiguity to the stage, where it is at once savage and impressionable. “New York is so amazing,” one of the Californians noted during a show at Glasslands last year, the band’s virgin NYC outing. “Everything seems so old!”