The Manic Gaye Bykers and Morose Swans at Work

In the underground mismatch bill of the year, England’s loose ‘n’ woolly trash-mongers Gaye Bykers on Acid ran head-on into New York’s primal-anxiety product Swans--a group more at home with the chill in the air at the John Anson Ford Theatre on Friday.

Gaye Bykers, this month’s plaything from England, are members of a scene called grebo --a blanket term for a mix-and-match melange of trash-consciousness filtered from the excesses of the last three decades, combined with rude behavior.

The Bykers have a rather routine garage-punk sound camouflaged by manic, psychedelicized guitar and a very funny, sexy, frenetic, hoarse male singer named Mary whose magnetic stage presence Friday almost redeemed such sophomoric ploys as basing a song on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Following the sonic precision of Swans’ morose bombardment, though, the Bykers seemed tinny and minor, better suited for a small basement club than a large outdoor stage.

Swans are at a stylistic crossroads. Having gone from sheer noisy assault to solemn, monolithic slabs of true heavy metal, the quintet is now approaching a semi-acoustic, almost accessible format. The result at the Ford often sounded like generic gloom-rock until the band locked into one of its industrial-strength repetitions. At their peak, Swans can still produce a melancholic beauty from psychic upheaval.