Thurs. March 18

Our pal, promoter and sometime promoter Billy Ruane, has been raving about Drug Rug for, well, centuries or so it seems. Sometimes, we’re late to the party, and that certainly was/is the case with Drug Rug, whom we finally caught last year at the Middle East. We liked. They’re at the Paradise March 18, sharing the bill with psychedelic Boston popsters Apollo Sunshine.
    We reviewed Drug Rug for the Herald last year. A distillation of our thoughts … Sarah Cronin used to mix sound at the Middle East Upstairs. Tommy Allen still tends bar there occasionally. But here they were Downstairs, the singing-and-guitar-playing duo was headlining the larger club, fronting the band they call Drug Rug, celebrating the release of their second recording, “Paint the Fence Invisible.”
    There was a little bit of country, a little bit of psychedelia, a little bit of the back-and-forth vocals swaps favored by X’s Exene and John Doe. And their harmonies could bring to mind the Mamas & the Papas and late-‘60s California pop.
    Cronin and Allen, a couple in real life, are completely at ease with each other. As they are with bassist Dan Burke and drummer Julian Cassanetti – who swapped instruments with Cronin near the end for “Day I Die.” (Organist Carter Tanton, who also fleshes out the band in concert and in the studio was not with them when we saw them; he’ll be with them this time.)
    Drug Rug likes to develop a churning rhythm, pause, drop down, and sometimes shift direction. In “Don’t Be Frightened by the Devil,” that turned into a hypnotic guitar coda.  In “For the Rest of Your Life,” there was a big bluesy finale.
      Ghosts pop up here and there. Nothing to be afraid of though. It’s more comforting. “Know your love is near/Despite the world so weird,” Cronin sang in “Haunting You.” They closed with a Ramones-ish song for which they have no title. They refer to it just as “punk,” and they left the crowd happy.
   Drug Rug, by the way, is not just making noise in their backyard. This gig was the second on a 10-date national headlining tour. Drug Rug is a melodic and upbeat band, though touches of melancholia flit about the edges. They generally favor brevity. Their set was an hour; their new disc clocks in under 32 minutes. What the crowd heard was a harder, noisier band than their CDs suggest.

 Show starts at 9. Tickets; $12 advance, $10 day of.

967 Commonwealth Ave., 617-562-8800 www.thedise.com