Velveteen Fox is soul in a tight sweater, or a velveteen straitjacket: a little hot 'n' bothered and trying to bust out. The Rochester quintet wraps its arms around classic soul's relentless drive and testimony as it chops and bops, wails, and impales. The band - Sam LaCara (guitar/bass), Greg Andrews (drums), J Repp (bass/guitar), and Don Anonymous (keyboards/top hat) - lays down a funky, irresistible r&b shag that'll rock your ass. But it's singer Suzie Willpower, that fine female found at the band's front end, that's a solid sender. She's a powder keg of pulchritude that sure doesn't sound blonde and white. Uhn!

Eighties porno-popsters The Tubes once sang "Don't Touch Me There." In contrast, the now-defunct Earl Cram Revue's music implied "Touch Me There... A Lot." The hometown powerhouse howled lyrically salacious and musically bodacious. And then it was gone, only to re-emerge tighter and brighter as the soul-centric Velveteen Fox. As The Earl Cram Revue, the band felt its pornographic themes were getting in the way of the music. With Velveteen Fox, principal songwriter and group leader LaCara led the band back to his roots.

"It's the kind of music that I was always a big fan of, growing up, listening to BBF, Top 40 radio," says LaCara. "Then I forgot about soul music for a long time. I got into progressive rock and started to listen to King Crimson and E.L.P. I started looking down my nose at maybe simpler forms of stuff."

Bass-wielding stud and soul aficionado Thunderclap Jimmy brought LaCara back. "It was mixed CDs Jimmy gave me," he says. "All kinds of soul stuff that helped me remember why I loved it. I got into Otis Redding in a big way." In fact, Redding is the Velveteen Fox yardstick.

"When I have a new idea these days," LaCara says, "I ask myself WWOD - what would Otis do? What would Otis Redding do with this tune?" Well, it's kind of hard to say without some sort of séance. But it's easy to see what singer Suzie Willpower will do with it: pants it, spank it, gut it, turn it inside out, and own it. That's what soul singers do.

"I think the problem with the Earl Cram stuff," says bassist/guitarist J Repp, "was that Suzie has such a powerful, beautiful voice, and it was getting lost in the fray. So when Sam started bringing more roots/r&b stuff it really played to her strong points."

Willpower didn't have to jump back, jack. "We stepped back," says Repp. "It's a truer vocal, and it demands a little more space."

"I was kind of resistant at first," Willpower says, "because I'm a punk rock chick. I didn't want to do it 'cause then [the audience] were going to make me do Janis Joplin, which I can't stand. It's not her, it's just the whole stigma behind it."

"Yeah," says Anonymous. "'Oh, a girl singer. Can you do Janis Joplin?'" She probably could, but Velveteen Fox strives to be original with just the right amount of vintage voodoo. LaCara and Repp switch off on guitar and bass, as Repp knows his way around the neck when it comes to guitar leads.

"He's a rock guitar god," Willpower says matter-of-factly.

"Suzie, she's the show," says Repp. "She's the icing. Sam writes really great songs." Songs that arise out of anything, according to the band: love, work, music, teenage daughters, and even babies.

"I wrote a song about a breast pump," says LaCara, which surprises Willpower, her old Earl Cram roots showing through Velveteen Fox's peroxide soul.

"I thought it was about jerking somebody off, personally," she says.

Velveteen Fox

w/Hackburn and Hellcat Maggie

Sunday, May 24

Bug Jar, 219 Monroe Ave.

8 p.m. | $5-$7 | 454-2966

myspace.com/velveteenfox