The keyboard wizard Joe McGinty is the longtime leader of the downtown music-tribute collective the Loser’s Lounge; Paul Devitt is the owner of the Beauty Bar. In early May, they opened this elegant punk-and-pop piano bar, where you can sit in an alcove booth or on a barstool around the piano, drink Hemingway Daiquiris, eat clams casino, and perform anything from Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” to Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” As at a Loser’s Lounge show, the mood is both appreciative and wry: shambling, joyous sing-alongs of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” alternate with, say, an impassioned “Lola” or a shy “Lovefool.” McGinty, bobbing along at the baby grand, provides backup vocals and says things like “I think we’re the only two people who know the words to ‘Baby Elephant Walk.’ ” On a recent Friday night, a group of five shaggily made its way through “Dancing Queen.” (“That was the Steubenville, Ohio, cast of ‘Mamma Mia!’ ” McGinty said). One of two talented singers on a moms’ night out had planned to sing the Abba song; she did “The Winner Takes It All” instead, slaying everybody. At the end of the night, Devitt, in half-glasses and a Stork Club T-shirt, took a break from racing around working to pick up the mic and sing “Sympathy for the Devil”; McGinty happily did the “whoo-whoo”s. ♦
