Rubblebucket Plays High-Energy Set Of Danceable Songs Thursday At Pearl Street

Rubblebucket performed Thursday at Pearl Street in Northampton.

Spending years on the road has honed Rubblebucket into a super-efficient party machine on stage.

The eight-piece Brooklyn band, formerly of Vermont, returned Thursday to Pearl Street in Northampton with a set full of high-energy songs, a sense of gleeful abandon and even a pair of giant metallic-looking puppets that wandered through the audience during the band’s set.

Rubblebucket’s music is an eclectic mix of styles that takes elements of indie-rock, funk and even electronic music and sloshes them all together into what’s best described as “dance music” on uptempo, horn-laced songs that make it impossible to stand still.

The band’s shifted from song to song, with deep, thick low end topped with chiming guitars and fluid horns here, and ripples of bass beneath bright keyboards there. Rubblebucket punctuated a rumbling, percussive version of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” with a psychedelic freakout that was electrifying without ever seeming self-indulgent.

The horn section — trombone, trumpet and saxophone — expanded to include a tuba on “Came Out of a Lady,” the band’s joyfully chaotic breakthrough single, which ended the main set as trombone and trumpet players crowd surfed while they played.

Rochester, N.Y., band Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad was on before Rubblebucket, playing an hour-long set of tight, deep reggae jams. The Ryan Howard Band opened the show.