LOW CUT CONNIE

Piano Rock is cool again! Adam Weiner and company bring a nostalgic cool to their very modern rock ‘n’ roll. “I think rock ‘n’ roll exists to be a red-blooded, countercultural medium,” Weiner says. “You’re supposed to get your hair messed up.” Art Dealers is the new album. “This record is all kink and no shame,” says Weiner of his tough, sexy and tender new album. “With Low Cut Connie, I try to create a safe space for you to just absolutely get your freak on.”

For years now, Low Cut Connie has built its grassroots coalition of oddballs, underdogs and fun-loving weirdos with songs that celebrate life on the fringes of polite society. The band’s infamously wild, passionate live shows provide a total release of stress, of inhibition, of shame, working up a primordial rock ‘n’ roll sweat for fans to get blissfully soaked in. The new album, and its full-length companion film, sizzle with that same cathartic sweat, reminding us that it’s time to get dirty again, and to feel alive. Art Dealers sits at the intersection of sleazy and soulful — a collection of risky, romantic, life-affirming anthems. That imperative comes through in the adults-only tone of songs like the opening Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, a sinuous, lurid rocker that sounds like walking through depraved Times Square in 1978: neon-lit and nasty with a snapping beat. The speedy, fuzzed-up garage-rocker Whips and Chains calls out what Weiner claims is a wave of neo-fascism, without ever losing its boogie rhythm section.