by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The Baltimore trio Celebration are throwing a party, and everyone’s invited. That doesn’t mean it’s all happy-happy-joy-joy for singer Katrina Ford, her keyboard-crazed partner Sean Antanaitis and drummer David Bergander. Their self-titled 2005 debut disc (produced by David Sitek of TV on the Radio, the members of which all contribute, just as Ford sings on their discs) weaves plenty of darker strands into a rich tapestry of explosive and unpredictable rhythms, pulsating melodies and powerful vocal pyrotechnics, a bold brew of free jazz, rock force and, in spirit if not in obvious application, world music. For all the many emotional tones the album touches on, though, the underlying target is a euphoric release rarely paralleled in pop-rock today.

Mirror: It seems to me that at the core of what Celebration is about is the transcendental experience, which in Freudian terms, one could call the id eclipsing the ego and superego. In layman’s terms, you could just call it bugging out. Am I on the right track with that?

Katrina Ford: Yes, you are, definitely. Every artist has their goals, and one of ours, outside of just being musicians, is to reach an ecstatic place when we’re performing, whether it be in front of an audience or at home in our practice space, to kind of transcend, like you said, the ego, and singularity of body and mind, and expand to the infinite (laughs). It’s one of those things that doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s really awesome and exciting. When you’re free and are becoming one with everything and the music, you’re not thinking about being self-conscious, or if you’re doing something wrong or right. You just are.

M: There’s a genuinely equilateral balance to the three musicians in Celebration, meaning that each of you brings a very necessary third, no more and no less, to the equation. While this isn’t uncommon in jazz, I think the last time I really remarked that about a band in the pop-rock realm was with Morphine, also a trio—I’m wondering if the democratically advantageous nature of odd numbers doesn’t feed that.

KF: It definitely does. I love working in a trio. In the past I’ve done four-pieces, and it’s always two against two, or three against one. There’s something about the balance of three that seems very democratic. We’re all such good friends, it’s easy to manage our creative energy and our emotions with just three people. Sometimes, when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, it gets confusing. I’ve done a duo too, that was fun but it wasn’t as exciting—that third element is chaos and the unexpected in some ways. That’s what David adds. Sean and I are a couple, and we are really intuitive with each other, so David’s the other element that’s really exciting and different.

M: Something I noticed about your lyrics is the frequency of questions—more than half the songs have lines ending in question marks, which is a surprisingly uncommon quality in a writer’s approach to lyrics.

KF: (laughs) I’ve never noticed that! I don’t know, I guess, in a sense, I have a lot of questions—and I want answers! I think everyone should have questions and want answers.

With …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Blood Brothers and Brothers and Sisters at la Tulipe on Monday, Nov. 6, 8 p.m., $20, all ages

>> Music Listings