Trailer Bride

Trailer Bride is one of those lightning-rod bands like Southern Culture on the Skids or the Cramps, the kind that people either love for their frenetic, spooky weirdness, or hate the way Georgia Senator Zell Miller loathes the planned Real Beverly Hillbillies "reality" show. Either way, gangly mystic Melissa Swingle, a North Carolina native who spent part of her youth in the Ivory Coast, is at the center, with a band that's getting more and more adept at following her multi-instrumental forays into sweaty barn lofts and moss-covered swamp docks. Her songs tend to bounce suddenly between creepy goofiness and goofy creepiness in that tiny pause before the offbeat, as likely to chronicle a love like poison ivy under polyester pants ("Itchin' for You") as they are to celebrate a violence-inspiring dancin' fool ("Jesco") or the "Ghost of Mae West." Hometown favorites Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys open this nontraditional St. Patrick's Day lineup.