New York City has a lot of bands lying around, but few are as loud and as lovable as Japanther. The duo of drummer/singer/tapesmith Ian Vanek and bassist/keybasher/singer Matt Reilly has distilled the overwhelming city's energy into the kind of punchy, noisy pop that turns sweat into epiphany. They belt it all into modified telephone receivers and drip NYC verve like the greasy slice of pizza tattooed on Ian's torso — which is to say nothing of the video art that they contributed to the Whitney Biennial a couple of years ago, or the rock opera that they staged with an animatronic dinosaur.