Luxuria: Sensual Evil

Band: Luxuria.

Personnel: Howard Devoto, vocals and keyboards; Noko, guitar.

History: A founding member of seminal punk outfit the Buzzcocks, Devoto left that group in 1976 to form Magazine, a brilliant post-punk band that released two magnificent records in the late ‘70s and disbanded in 1981. Devoto went on to enjoy a few years of modest success as a solo artist, then dropped out of the game in 1984 for a four-year vacation. He jumps back into the fray in partnership with Noko, a Liverpudlian guitarist whose band, the Umbrella, released one EP, “Make Hell for Beautiful People,” before splitting up. After being introduced in 1986 by Pete Shelley (also a founding member of the Buzzcocks), Devoto and Noko began writing songs together, were signed to Beggars Banquet and recruited Gavin Mackillop (best known for his work with Shriekback) to produce their debut LP, “Unanswerable Lust,” which was recorded last summer.

Sound: A nasty young man of unsavory interests and a flair for purple prose that brings Baudelaire to mind, Devoto explores various naughty intrigues of the heart that unfold in a fictional universe that combines the perverse formality of an 18th-Century salon with a sordid back alley in London. Howard’s head seems to live in a strange place, which was no doubt shaped by the literature he ingests; references to Proust and Rimbaud crop up on Luxuria’s debut LP, while one particularly beautiful cut titled “Flesh” shimmers with the delirious sensuality of a Paul Bowles story. Singing in a lugubrious voice evocative of John Lydon, Devoto frames his literary rants with the sort of lush arrangements he mastered as front man for Magazine. Luxuria’s music seems fairly conventional given a cursory hearing, but something chilly and vaguely evil lurks behind this velvet curtain of sound. “For me, Luxuria is a land--a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah,” says Devoto in explaining the group, while guitarist Noko describes himself as “someone who lives in sin and artifice with a diamond-encrusted cat and a collection of religious icons.” The glam-rock crowd should eat this stuff up.

Shows: Thursday at Bogart’s, Friday at John Anson Ford Theater.