If you dug garage punk in Portland during the '00s, you remember the Hunches, the most explosive local group of the era. Frontman Hart Gledhill turned antagonizing an audience (and torturing himself) into high art. But the Hunches were more than crashing punk pranksters—the songs were serious and strong. Much of the writing was done by guitarist Chris Gunn, who returns with the Lavender Flu. Gunn is also full of righteous energy, but he channels it inward, the opposite of Gledhill. And while in performance the new band reminds at times of the Hunches—particularly Gunn's songwriting sense, his sharp, bending, circular riffs, and the buildup/breakdown/loud/quiet surges of drummer Ben Spencer (also of the Hunches)—, the Lavender Flu employ a wider, more dynamic musical vocabulary, free from garage punk's narrow trappings. There are bits of plucky fingerpicking, spacey delay, noise washes, and more, swirled in purposeful arcs. Gunn has been working on a soon-to-be-released double album, Heavy Air, practically since the Hunches' 2009 demise. It's been a long time coming, and if a fabulous first show and a few snippets on Soundcloud are any indication, it will be worth the wait. ANDREW R TONRY