At the Lamplighter on Saturday, August 4

You have to admire Crystal Pistol's unswerving determination to pick up where bands like Faster Pussycat left off. It's like the cock-rock equivalent of the Flat Earth Society or the late Sasquatch hunter René Dahinden; you can only wonder at the iron-clad strength of its belief, especially now that inelegantly wasted eyeliner fetishists with ulcerated septums and Izzy Stradlin's hair have considerably less currency than they did when the Pistol first squirted into life six years ago.

Saturday's show at the Lamplighter acted as a preview of the Vancouver quintet's upcoming, as-yet-untitled sophomore album, which, it appears, will sound an awful lot like the band's self-titled debut. Anybody expecting anything different deserves a good clip around the ear, mind you–the members of Crystal Pistol might as well stand on-stage and smash plates on their heads for 40 minutes if we're measuring their contribution to music. That's not the point. Three chords, roaring Marshalls, a stumbling and apparently loaded guitar section, a ringer for Vinnie Paul on drums ­–complete with shiny totenkopf accessory on his black-leather Stetson for added offence–plus an endearingly oafish frontman who swears constantly and tends to get his microphone and his beer bottle mixed up–that's the point.

Vocalist Mik Ireland looked a lot like Dahinden's fabled man-ape, actually. He's built like a brick shithouse–or maybe that should be Mik Shithouse–and he stands front and centre with one thumb hitched in his pocket, his left leg quivering, and his ass hanging out of his tiny pants like a puffy white awning in a windstorm. He's hilarious, and loves playing dumb-as-fuck. Introducing "Bayou", Ireland explained, "This is about signing a record deal with a bunch of cunts." After a beat, he added, disconsolately, "Uh, we're the cunts."

"Bayou", as it turned out, had none of the swampy vibe implied by the title, but it was a little slower than everything else, with a relatively lighter-than-air feel that came off like the Backyard Babies aiming for raga (and missing).

The show ended with the perennial "Rockstar", to a strangely tepid response and no encore. The scale is somewhat smaller, but Crystal Pistol will always be able to rely on an audience in the same way that April Wine will suck most of Surrey into the Commodore every couple of months or so, but Saturday's crowd–composed of wall-to-wall sluts wearing things like LA Guns baby Ts (and that was just the boys!)–was probably danced out after top-drawer support from the Belushis, who get better, faster, and tighter all the time, and White Rock's Mary's Gunns.

The latter was a surprise, even if its first three songs raised the possibility that these jokers actually view Poison's "Unskinny Bop" as a cultural milestone. Mercifully, by mid-set Mary's Gunns had subtly transformed itself into a junior Black Crowes of no less accomplishment than other highfalutin Vancouver rockers plowing the same southern-harmony furrow (think Lions in the Street or Black Bones). We should keep a heavily mascara'd eye on 'em.