Be Brave

On their debut, …and Girls Club, Austin, Texas’s the Strange Boys tapped into a punk swagger that drove their tunes along. The sound aligned them with a number of other garage rock bands wandering the indie rock landscape these days. In fact, the Strange Boys matched up well with peers like Black Lips, because they seemed to have a more earnest R&B thump to their jagged sound.

Austin's the Strange Boys debuted last year with The Strange Boys and Girls Club, a play-it-loose collection of twangy garage tunes suited for pool hall scuffles. It was an album content to play well within a defined set of parameters and found them tinkering with rockabilly, 1960s R&B, and British Invasion rock. It's easy to imagine the Strange Boys could churn out sets of these half-drunk shakers forever, and considering how well they did pull it off, that seemed like something to look forward to.