Cleaning up your act is tricky for any fuzz-minded garage band, and Austin's the Strange Boys have been weathering that transition a bit roughly. Their demented 2009 debut, The Strange Boys and Girls Club, combined punk and country and even doo-wop into a bold and bird-flipping sound that proved fast wasn't the only way to convey agitated. On last year's Be Brave, they tidied up their sound and refined their songwriting, but lost so much of what made them strange in the first place. And now Live Music takes them further in that direction, adding piano to their guitar-drums-bass-and-sometimes-harmonica lineup. The problem with this trajectory: Every album so far sounds like a transition, pointing to big things but never quite producing them.
The title of the Strange Boys' new album is surely intended to be ironic: Live Music attempts to separate the instruments and create some depth in the production, but it may be the least live they've sounded. Gone is the lo-fi spontaneity and fuck-it-all atmosphere; instead, we get a newfound professionalism that translates to midtempo plods and something like self-reflection. The album is restrained, surprisingly low-key, and-- at its lowest points-- polite. The songs ask for but never demand your attention, then respond with a sociable thank you and good day.
Even so, the Strange Boys' garage remains enormous, with plenty of room to stack boxes of honky-tonk, rockabilly, R&B, and classic rock. That inclusive approach has always been their greatest asset and most distinguishing trait, although for the most part Live Music compacts these competing urges into a very generalized Americana that never takes advantage of their Texas roots. They're not synthesizing disparate styles in the great tradition of Austin, but skimming the surfaces of ideas they once explored more deeply. In this setting, Ryan Sambol's voice, which has been compared to Dylan and any number of Nuggets frontmen, sounds more like Tom Petty, but without the classic rocker's signature deadpan.
When the tempos pick up, so does the album. "Omnia Boa" adapts a train-song chug-a-lug for a subtly menacing groove, and "Punk's Pajamas" is a jumble of guitars laced together with a gangly harmonica theme. "You can study the past or dig the future," Sambol sings on the latter, "but the present will never leave you." It's a sharp insight that hints at the Strange Boys' goals: to incorporate rock history into a sound that isn't defined by nostalgia or innovation for the sake of innovation. They're trying to find a way to live in the moment, which is certainly commendable. As Sambol unravels that theme across these 14 songs, the album grows more endearing, if never quite exciting.
