E-Mail This Article to a Friend Myths and local legends (continued)

WHITE MAGIC, who’ll share the Paradise stage with the Fiery Furnaces Friday, are a trio whose piano-heavy psych-folk is similarly strange but follows a darker Muse. The band — singer/pianist/guitarist Mira Billotte (last seen in Quix*o*tic with her sister Christina), drummer/bassist/pianist Miggy Littleton, and guitarist/drummer Andy Macleod — formed a year or so ago in Brooklyn, but Macleod is a Massachusetts native, having lived "all over the place" here (Andover, primarily) and attended the Cambridge School of Weston. He was college friends with Billotte — "we dropped out on the same day" — and says the two teamed with Littleton because of shared passions. "Smoking pot and listening to music. Definitely the bond was through marijuana, music, and sense of humor."

White Magic’s debut EP, Through the Sun Door (Drag City), offers few laughs. But though it’s almost unremittingly dark, it’s nonetheless compelling, with Billotte’s sonorous, penetrating voice by turns deep and vaguely disturbing like Nina Simone and gossamer like Joni Mitchell. "One Note" sets it against loping Dave Brubeck piano runs and tricky time shifts. When she suddenly shifts pitch, falling into time and tune with the piano’s scales, the effect is entrancing and intoxicating. And "Don’t Need" slows things down to a simmer as she sings (of a suicide pact?) in a hypnotic plaint.

"It’s definitely Mira’s [band]," says Macleod. "The songs come out of Mira. She’ll get behind the piano and just play and it’s . . . like, ‘Holy shit, this girl’s insane.’ Anything Miggy and I can do to amplify her voice."

White Magic might come off as a bit hippie-ish. Macleod tells me he’s spent "the whole day in a bong." And their press sheet proclaims that "in music and in peace we come from the sun," also joking that Macleod once played in the Grateful Dead. But the Manson family might be the better comparison. "Plain Gold Ring" starts a cappella, with only bass and brushed drums falling in. A tale of abandonment, old as the hills, it’s absolute desolation, Billotte’s voice betraying soul-shaking despair. And in "Apocalypse," the sky rains blood. No question, the trio cultivate an occult image. Macleod cites arcane archaic philosophies, and the cover of their EP is a mish-mash of totems and potions and owls and goats — and, almost hidden, a tourist snow globe encasing the Twin Towers.

"Just being alive in the 21st century and living in New York," says Macleod, "we’re constantly inundated with fabricated bullshit. Everyone’s image-conscious, money-conscious. Really conservative." He adds, "I’m sick of walking around New York and seeing people dressed up like the Strokes. It’s time to mellow out and get real. We’re getting separated from our human nature. We wanna get back to being human beings through music, to spread positivity — even if the music is dark."

THE SAME BILL that culminates with Fiery Furnaces begins promisingly as well, with Cambridge’s Night Rally warming up the crowd. Their debut EP, The Elegant Look of New, is expansive, energetic post-punk, alternately angular and elastic, recalling the textured starkness of Joy Division here, the danceable agit-pop of Gang of Four there.

The band — bassist Farhad Ebrahimi, guitarist Devin King, and drummer Luke Kirkland — moved here about a year ago from Santa Fe. They live together in an Inman Square house and practice in the basement, and in their equal-opportunity song structures, there’s a sense of familiar ease that surfaces when they intertwine their instruments. "We’re very democratic," says Ebrahimi. "Or very anarchist. I’m not sure."

His bass is high in the mix, more or less on a equal footing with King’s textured, delay-heavy guitar and Kirkland’s tricky drumming. Which means, Ebrahimi says, "It’s really easy for us to have a lot of clarity, so we’re not stepping on each other’s toes." "South Pacific, Pt. II" is a knotty workout, all probing bass and staccato guitars dissipating into white noise, kept in motion with loose yet on-the-mark drumming. "Humor Is Non Sequitur" melds jangly guitars to an elastic bass line with a few hoo-hoo-hoos tossed in. "A Birthday Party," with its echoing, pealing guitars and emotive call and response vocals, evokes the controlled fury of Fugazi.

"One of the things I love about Fugazi its that every member is doing something unique with his instrument," says Ebrahimi. "They’re all doing different things, but every instrument is important." He concedes, though, that not every member of the band would say the same. "We’re sometimes jokingly critical of each other’s musical tastes. Someone will be like, ‘We all listen to Fugazi!’ And then someone else will say, ‘Actually, no. I’m not that into Fugazi.’ "

One musician the three do agree on — though their exploratory music doesn’t much sound like his tightly wound tunes — is Elvis Costello. They take their name from one of his song titles. "When we were tossing names around, I threw that out because I just like the notion of a night rally," says Ebrahimi. "Not in the fascist sense — just a bunch of people getting together for a cause, making a statement all with one voice."

The Fiery Furnaces, White Magic, and Night Rally perform this Friday, September 10, at the Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call (617) 931-2000.