Critics' Picks

For Causey, front man for this semi-eponymously named Florida quintet, getting guitar lessons from David Koresh was like the Flying Nun learning landing maneuvers from Christ himself. Causey once followed Koresh, believing in the same things (primarily that women should do the cooking and cleaning, men the hunting) and rocking in the same key--until the issue of polygamy came up. Koresh had a wife for every day of the week. Causey was, and says he still is, a one-gal guy. After their breakup, and after suffering a near-fatal skateboarding accident, Causey, formerly known as Scott Stanton, did what any even-keeled cultist would do when recovering from a head wound: He started his own religion and a serious, eclectic rock-and-roll band.

The religion, the Causey Way, totals nearly 100 members; a handful of those congregants, referred to on the Causey compound as sub-members of ACE (Aural Communications Entertainment), travel the secular country with Causey, gigging all the way. The band's shows, which Causey calls "services," are relatively straightforward, hardly enlightening baptisms of sound or thought. While the "spirit," whatever that is, may be moving Causey and his bandmates to higher aesthetic ground, concertgoers are reduced to onlookers, like tourists in New York who pay money to witness Baptist church services in Harlem, but can't sing along with the choir. In any packaging, it seems, religious spectacle still sells.

—Anthony Mariani