Photo by Rain PeasleyTeenage band Kids and Animals opened for Skeletons with Flesh on Them at the Crocodile last night. Turning chaos into music is a difficult task, but something Kids and Animals seem to understand. Seeing beauty in chaos is a theme of “Dirty City,” the band’s best song: “I think the sky looks pretty/ with all this fog in a dirty city.” Purposeful dissonance is a neat trick that Kids and Animals managed to pull off on the band’s debut, self-titled EP–much in the vein of Modest Mouse or Okkervil River. Singers and primary songwriters Leland Corley and Alex Robkin play off each other’s dissonant voices: Robkin will scream and shout the chorus to “Backyard” while Corley attempts to sing it. While these moments sound polished on the band’s album (although “polished” might be a misnomer, since so much about Kids an Animals seems purposely out of key) there are times where this technique falls apart when the band performs live. “Blind Spots” felt like a mess at last night’s Crocodile show; the heavy, layered vocals–sometimes coming from four members of the band at ones–drowned each other out.It seems most likely that these missteps are the result of the band members’ age and experience–all members are 17 or 18 years old–than their raw talent, because some moments of Kids and Animals’ Crocodile performance were bring-the-house-down fantastic. “Car Running” alternated smartly between heavy and light sounds, moving from crashing guitars and drums to delicate piano. It was artful and well-orchestrated; the noise was clearly planned and designed. (This is something that the first opener, The Royal Bear, struggled with. The Joy Division-styled band has potential, but they had a hard time balancing their instruments and it often descended into noise). “Dirty City,” the band’s likely single, is filled with so many crescendos and decrescendos that it’s hard to believe a handful of teenagers wrote it. Seeing Kids and Animals live is like watching a group of high school students strap on guitars in a garage after receiving them as birthday presents, play a few notes, and then realize they could start a damn good band. That energy and passion–particularly from Alex Robkin, who sings 46th Street like Ian Curtis having a seizure–will take the band a long way, but they’ve got to find some balance, as well. Chaos has to be controlled and harnessed, and right now, Kids and Animals is just teetering on the edge of letting it control them. Here’s to hoping that, with a little bit more time, they’ll perfect their dissonance.