ACTIVIST SINGER

Looking more like a punked-out Canter’s waitress than a rock singer, Vi Subversa and her band, Poison Girls, served up a platter of intriguing, if monochromatic, songs about sexual, social and partisan politics at Club Lingerie on Saturday night. The best part about this eye-catching British quartet--the 50-year-old Subversa plus three younger male musicians--is the intelligence and dry wit in its uncompromisingly activist songs, which range from caustic examinations of English politics to a more kind-hearted tune Subversa said she wrote “for my own generation.”

Poison Girls’ music tries to cover a similarly broad range (including a surprisingly large number of folk-derived tunes), but in concert the songs’ differences are undercut by the sameness of the guitar/bass/drums lineup and by Subversa’s tough, growlly monotone.