CHRIS CODUTO/Arizona Summer Wildcat Drummer Ryan Bell bashes the skins at Able Was I's rehearsal space. The band is playing what may be its last show Wednesday night at Flash Gallery.

Any way you look at it, palindromes never change. Read the same way backwards and forwards, palindromes are solid and unchanging. Take the words "racecar" and "radar" for example. Flip them backwards and they look the same.

The irony of local Tucson band Able Was I seems implicit in its name. The moniker is a fragment from the famous palindrome "Able was I ere I saw Elba," a reference to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's expulsion to Elba. For a band working under such an immutable construction, Able Was I has thrived on change.

"We started as a pretty straight-up hardcore band," said singer and cellist Brad Fest, a recent UA graduate. "We were good, we were loud, but we all kind of got bored of that and we started changing. (Current keyboardist Kurt Sommer) started playing keyboard more, we had some songs that didn't have guitars at all. Then Kurt stopped being in the band for a while, so we tried to nix the keyboard."

"They continued going on with making this sludgy kind of rock that went on for hours," said Sommer, "Songs were like 15 or 20 minutes long."

It became apparent to Fest that things had to change. Anybody keeping an ear on contemporary underground music could feel the sounds moving away from 6-string crunch and towards a mix of icy drum machines and warm synthesizer stabs.

"One night I was just driving around listening to the one demo CD we had made while Kurt was still in the band," said Fest. "I decided I wanted Kurt to be in the band and I didn't want to play guitar anymore. I've played cello forever, so I switched over because we have another guitar player (studio art senior Jaxun Doten) anyway. After that we stopped making straightforward rock in every way."

Fest, Sommer, Doten and drummer Ryan Bell rearranged the band's sound to incorporate long instrumental passages, samples, programmed beats and sudden changes in dynamics. The screaming stayed. All of the sudden Able Was I found itself with a new sound, a singular amalgamation of the ponderous but insistent crescendos of Godspeed and You Black Emperor and the wounded beats of Kid 606.

And while the band occasionally wears its influences on its sleeve, Fest insists the sound is a result of spending three years together, in one form or another.

"It's gotten to the point where our main influence is ourselves. The music we've made in the past, we're trying to get away from that towards something different."

After all the lineup shifting (the band acquired Bell after its original drummer moved to Rhode Island), the model of musical evolution known as Able Was I may finally have reached its end. Fest is moving to Pittsburgh in mere weeks in order to pursue an MFA in creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

"We don't want to hold him back," said Bell, "And even if we tried he wouldn't stay. Even if we taped him to the wall in the practice space."

"He'd get away," said Sommer.

Hearing the band members speak with such obvious warmth about one another, it is strange to realize they have only performed in their current incarnation once before. Their slot opening for Travis Morrison and Challenger last month at Solar Culture Gallery could have convinced anyone that Able Was I was only in Tucson for one night, that they were part of the tour.

Of course, Able Was I is not a nationally touring band. In fact, its upcoming performance may be its last. The band says it might try to play one more show before Fest departs for Pennsylvania and the band changes sound and shape once more. However, just as its songs unexpectedly veer from ominous cello strains to spoken poetry to screams and crashes, nothing about the future is certain.

"There are certain times you can get a sense of being angry," said Bell of the band's music. "Most of the time it's just kind of depressing or upsetting. Some of the parts are kind of upsetting to me, but in a beautiful way. It has a power to it."

With no records for sale and a tenuous future, Able Was I may not conquer the world, but then again, neither did Napoleon.