Saturday’s “Hipsters Revisited” at Bar Pink Elephant was a ‘60s themed event that promised music of the garage, psychedelic, and freakbeat varieties, all while making assurances that there would be “no weird shit or flutes”. They made good on these promises with some trippy mood-lighting and an assortment of DJs spinning appropriately obscure tracks from the period, but the real draw was a live performance by local retro-rock band The Loons.

Long blond hair hanging in his face, Loons lead singer Mike Stax commanded the stage with all the raw power of an anachronistic Iggy Pop as the band blazed through a set that recalled garage acts Love, The Sonics, and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. After grabbing everyone’s attention with “Red Dissolving Rays”, Stax joked that, in honor of Gay Pride week, he was dedicating the song “My Time” to Texas, “the gayest state of all”.

Highlights included “Alexander”, “Stowaway”, and the great “Some Kind Of Asylum”, which featured bassist Anja Diabolik contributing well-placed backup vocals to the song’s intensely catchy chorus. Guitarists Marc Schroeder and Chris Marstellar took turns piling harmonious solos on top of drummer Mike Kamoo’s groovy rhythms during the songs’ frequent breakdowns. The band ended their set with the appropriately titled “You’re Gonna Miss Me”, which the crowd was all too willing to concede as they summoned the band back out for an encore.

Being labeled as “retro” can be the kiss of death for a band, instantly banishing them to the realm of irrelevant novelty act. Working within such an idiom is usually left to wedding bands or baby boomers who never got over The Doors. But this was not the case with The Loons, who ably recalled a bygone era without ever sounding past their expiration date. And when a band can rock as hard as they do, nobody in the crowd cares what year it is.