San Francisco duet the Classical make concise descriptions quite a task. The easiest way to sum them up is to call them baroque art-rock, though that doesn't quite cut it. "Shovel & Bevel" combines clinically mesmerizing drums with odd phrases repeated over and over with darkly expressive strings to create a creepily compelling product. Lead singer and songwriter Juliet E. Gordon pushes the lurching songs forward with her sighing vocals, leaving long stretches of meditative blank space before reappearing to offer more cryptic intonations. There's a looseness that may reveal an improvisational bent to the Classical, even if that's just my hunch. Though the songs tend to move slowly, there's a disjointed structure to most of them that manages to keep you on your toes.

THE CLASSICAL, w/ Fruit Juice, Retrospecter, 8 p.m., Deadbeat Olympia, 226 N. Division St., Olympia, $5, 360.943.0662