Sounds on the Ground #14: The Strange Boys
By: Dan Monsell
What's the deal? Spawn of Austin, Texas, this quartet of young reprobates are a Screaming Jay Hawkins of Hillbilly Bop, booty shaking Rhythm & Blues and filthy rock n roll. Imbued with the sound of vintage rock and roll, or prison from a young age, The Strange Boys share a fine new-wave garage-rock party-line with In The Red (US label) accomplices Black Lips, Vivian Girls, Jay Reatard and many others. It's the sound of a young adulthood spent in bars living like people who spent their whole lives in bars (indeed the majority of their debut record The Strange boys...and Girls Club came from sessions recorded in an abandoned liquor store) and luckily for all involved, the music came along and saved them from the chain gang. Personal favourite 'Heard You Wanna Beat Me Up', starts with the life-in-trouble proclamation of "I'm in trouble with another man / I did something I didn't plan". Such dangerous Southern fun, whether real or narrative, only serves to conjure up a modern day Bonnie and Clyde style barrel gang that as a well-raised young British male I can't help but find fantastically alluring.
Unlike some of the others around them their homage is even more retro; but not just merely revivalist in that respect, more... classic. They swerve towards Dylan, The Band and the Stones, all with the spirit of titans of sixties garage punk, but manage to do so as if paying true homage, in the way that only men with guitars, a whiskey bottle and strained voices knows how. That's the greatness of real Americana right there. Not re-inventing the wheel of course - but in age where everything's has been done before etc, it's surely more about who you take from, who you reference and how well you do it. That these strange fellas can take some from the biggest and still sound so great (and these songs really get you after a couple of listens) is nothing short of fantastic. Like the title the TV programme Woody Allen works on in Manhattan - human beings, wow. Something about them gives you the impression that they'll inspire real impassioned devotion, certainly a lot of justified excitement and at the very least, one hell of whiskey-drinking good time.
When can I see them live: They're currently playing more dates than there are US States, on both sides of the Atlantic. Remember, if they weren't on tour they'd be getting drunk and causing trouble (they've got a song called 'The Burning Feeling Of Rough Liquor' for chrissake), so this is a good thing for society. Make sure to catch 'em for one of these when they're over in the UK in August. It'll rule. Totes.
12th August Upset the Rhythm @ Bardens Boudoir, London
13 Aug The Other Rooms Newcastle Upon Tyne
14 Aug Budenell Social Club Leeds
15 Aug Now Wave Manchester, Northwest
16 Aug Bodega Social Nottingham
18 Aug Windmill Brixton London, London and South East
21 Aug The Victoria Birmingham
22 Aug Green Man Festival Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales
What can I listen to: Forthcoming releases in the UK are due on the fantastic Rough Trade, but until then head on over to www.myspace.com/thestrangeboys and listen to a whole six tracks. Once won over by said tracks, you can head here http://intheredrecords.com/pages/order-intl.html to buy stuff like their debut LP direct from In The Red. Otherwise you can get it other places like, you know record stores.
We all know music peaked in 1994, so give me a sound-bite about we could compare them to some kind of obscure band from the Britpop era: Once again this section is proving slightly difficult. However, we shall try again. Grab hold of Dodgy and maybe even a bit of Menswear, move them over to the deepest south of the USA, force them to spend some serious time in bars, getting into fights, trouble and the underclothing of the local ladies, give them a whole bunch of classic Americana to listen too, slim them down to four and send 'em back over in August. That there, is the Strange Boys. This has to stop. Really.
Artists in this article: Vivian Girls, The Strange Boys, Jay Reatard, Black Lips