PLAYGROUND BOSTON

You’ve been to the circus, right? No? Well, I have. I’ll never forget the time when, as a young child in Mrs. Albrecht’s third grade class, we took a field trip to the Barnum & Bailey circus.

I remember that, upon leaving the outside world and entering the massive red and yellow tent, suddenly all the lights seemed dimmer and more eerie. The air was thick with some sort of latent anticipation. And it might’ve been only my youthful imagination, but I could’ve sworn that amid the hazy fog, trolls and circus folk inexplicably clad in dapper suit-jackets and bowler hats cowered beneath the stands, waiting for the show to begin. Why am I waxing nostalgic about obscure childhood memories, you ask? Well, it’s the only fitting way I can come up with to relate to you my experience at the Viennagram show at the Middle East Upstairs on Sept 3.

I saw the members of Viennagram prowling the Mid East before their set (mainly front man Alex Vienna, or A.V., in his eclectic Johnny-Depp-version-Wonka getup), and immediately wrote them off as another kitschy gimmick-group without the chops to back up the glitter and surely impending theatrics. Luckily, this was not the case.

From beginning to end, Viennagram stormed the cramped stage with their own take on an old-timey carnival that consisted of every unapologetic thing they could get their hands on. Slide-whistles, tinny pianos, crashing drums and a giant tuba, along with the unrelenting, often shrieking, vocals of A.V. and his accomplice, Danger Dan, are what make Viennagram so bizarre, yes, but also what make them so entertaining. (Not to mention Dan’s instant assent to pour the contents of an audience member’s PBR tallboy down his throat with the dexterous precision of a professional fire-swallower.) Sure, at times songs like “Lucky Money Funeral Paper,” might sound like nothing more than a clanging dirge backed by the dude who bangs on buckets outside of the House of Blues every night, but when Viennagram attacked with “Forever People,” a bracing song with a chorus of “hey hey!” that’d entice any fist-pumping enthusiast, it seemed the audience was hooked.