If your taste in rock runs to the adventurous side, the Burren tonight is the place to be. Featured will be the lush pop of Lovina Falls and the trash and glam of Gene Dante and the Future Starlets – whose respective front people, Valerie Forgione and Dante, are two of the most striking in town.

The two have in fact been friends for decades now, and their first meeting was in a decidedly non-glam setting. “We both worked at the Burlington Mall,” Forgione confesses. “There weren’t a lot of so-called alternative people there, so you’re drawn like a magnet to each other. You instantly think, ‘Aha, one of my people’.”

Lovina Falls is the latest project from Forgione, once the frontwoman of the much-admired, ethereal pop band Mistle Thrush. “I feel like this is continuing the story from a different place,” she says. “After Mistle Thrush broke up I was a little heartbroken, because it was hard to let go after ten years. We came close to a national breakthrough but we never got over that last hump, probably because we were somewhat unclassifiable.” And how would she try to classify her music?

“One of the terms I’ve heard is ‘Baroque drama pop,’ and I like that— It’s kind of dark with a bit of a dramatic twist. But I don’t think we’re Goth because I don’t take myself seriously enough.”

She spent the break between bands writing music for films and stage, and played most of the instruments on Lovina Falls’ album herself. Onstage it’s expanded to a septet including a couple Mistle Thrush alumni. To see Forgione onstage you’d probably assume she’d been  in theater, but you’d be wrong.

“I’ll tell you something, I’m a terrible actor. But I do have a lot of appreciation for the performance end of things. It comes from inside and how I hear the music; music is a very physical thing to me. So when I’m onstage is the only time I can really be myself; I’m acting the rest of the time.”

The new band, she said, is just the next step. “This is more about putting together a group of musicians to perform the songs, rather than being a band and trying to get signed to a label. Whatever my music is, it comes from 20 years working in a record store, 10 years being a radio DJ, 10 years being in a band and then the time writing instrumental music. So it’s really all of the above.”

Gene Dante and the Future Starlets make a proud update of the glitter-rock era — not so much the exact musical style as the playful licentiousness that went with it. “For every ounce of glitter I’ve got, there’s an ounce of gutter with it,” he says. “There’s certainly a trash and tawdry element to every thing I do. But I can’t scream to save my life, so for me it’s always crooners like Neil Diamond and Tony Bennett. When I started out in music there were always sweaty guys in T-shirts. So I thought okay, why can’t I put on a little makeup and wear a suit?”

And yes, there is an inclusive point in his show. “I feel like I was doing the non-binary gender stuff before most people in this town. Maybe someone will hear a song, get curious and come to a show and say ‘Hey, there are some gay people here. Maybe there’s no problem with people expressing themselves’.”

Dante is also a working actor who has shared the screen with the likes of Chris Evans and Luke Hemsworth. “The connection for me is that it’s all a form of expression. I did a lot of musical theater because I can carry a tune and pass as a heterosexual male, that makes me a rare bird in this town. But a lot of musicians have told me ‘You’re really an actor’, and a lot of actors have said ‘You’re just a rock and roll caveman’. So I don’t really fit in anywhere.”

Valerie Forgione is the frontwoman of Lovina Falls. (Photo Joan Hathaway)