Terribly Lovely: Bellafea

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BELLA, "BEAUTIFUL." Plus fea, "ugly."

That's the tension at the heart of Bellafea's music. The Chapel Hill trio's debut album, "Cavalcade," offers a taste of that tension before Thursday night's Black Cat show.

Much of the intensity radiates from guitarist, singer and tiny whirlwind Heather McEntire. Her coiled ferocity evokes old-school Polly Harvey — minus the theater, heavy on American indie directness. She's well matched by drummer Nathan Buchanan and bassist Eddie Sanchez.

"My parents never listened to music," McEntire says. The family farm machinery provided "neat percussive and rhythmic sounds." McEntire taught herself guitar by picking out Dylan and DiFranco songs. But the versatility of her voice arrived from Mars. Growing up, she says, "I never sang audibly, aside from mumbling to church hymns. I was drawn to minor chords and melody, probably from those hymns."

On "Arctic," McEntire's pipes blow in full glory, from croon to yowl. Plus a string section. Over blazing rock.

These were sounds she discovered as a freshman college radio DJ. "That's where I learned about underground music and punk and dissonance," she says.

Her first punk record? Sleater-Kinney, "Dig Me Out." "I spent that summer listening and trying to learn all their parts. That's when I bought an electric guitar, and it's still the only one I have."

"Depart (I Never Knew You)" features college radio mainstay John Darnielle, of The Mountain Goats — a neighbor and tour mate. His half-howled harmonies alongside McEntire evoke X in its prime.

The song's title plies the delicious tension between romantic and biblical connotations. "I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and, though my spirituality has evolved into something quite different now, I am still drawn to it in this secular, observant way. Like, I'm having a relationship with it, or my childhood, or all those emotions," says McEntire.

"Telling the Hour" is a Southern gothic blues, with choir and violin. It feels like a somber procession — or cavalcade — through North Carolina's complex history. Says McEntire, "There is a struggle here to have voice." The same tension "between radical reformation and historic, Bible Belt preservation," that Bellafea mines so powerfully.

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; Thu., 9 p.m. $8; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Bob Massey

Photos courtesy Southern Records