POP CAPSULES : BOHEMIAN FROU-FROU

Kate Bush has a song called “Babooshka” in her repertoire of theatrical space-maiden chansons , so it’s natural that a local group calling itself Babooshka would have a lot of Kate Bush in it. The quintet has an innate appeal to those with lofty pretensions, and on Saturday at the Lhasa Club it surrounded itself with bohemian frou-frou (the stage was so over-decorated that the bassist became temporarily entangled in a dead tree branch).

The musicians wear colorful Gypsy attire, and its two wood-nymph female singers (one of them Romania’s chiffon-twirling answer to Stevie Nicks) perform delicate vocal rounds in tremulous voices. With its fine, astral musicianship, Babooshka creates meandering story-songs like “Geisha” (with the profound refrain, “I make tea!”) and an insightful ode to “Wuthering Heights”: “Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Cathy, I’m coming home!” Ah, literature! Ah, Babooshka! Pass the antacid.