I return to the place again and again, in my imagination: a pink house in the secluded woods of West Saugerties in the haunted Catskill Mountains, where in 1967 Bob Dylan and the Band retreated to the basement to create what I consider to be the greatest music, or shit, art period, of the 20th Century. I have seen Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Suitors, Even, and I have never felt the need to see it again. The same goes for reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. But I return to the Basement Tapes over and over, in awe of their offhand and shambolic brilliance, their sprung quality and their perpetual ability to amaze, inspire, and amuse. They’re mythical, the result of a musical collaboration that was nothing short of alchemical, and I’m forever on the lookout for bands that embody the same impish but at the same time profound spirit that Bob and the boys captured in their rustic pink hideaway in the woods.
So it was with great pleasure that I recently discovered The Strange Boys, a band that formed in the Dallas/Austin area in 2004 and is—like the great Felice Brothers—keeping the spirit of Big Pink alive. The band (which as of 2010 included Ryan Sambol on guitar, vocals, organ, piano, and harmonica; his brother Philip on bass; Greg Enlow on guitar, glockenspiel, organ, piano, and vocals; and Scott Densham on drums; with Jenna E. Thornhill DeWitt—of Mika Miko—contributing vocals and sax and Tim Presley—of White Fence and Ty Segall—providing bass, percussion, and vocals) really hit their stride on 2010’s rough and ready Be Brave, on which they play it raw but with tons of spirit and in so doing come closer to approximating the wild and wooly wonder of The Basement Tapes than almost any music I’ve ever heard.
The band is anchored by Ryan Sambol’s indescribable vocals; one of a kind, he sounds like he’s whining, or has a head cold, and constitutes the missing link between the tuneless Neil Young a la Tonight’s the Night and a punk accustomed to failure. As for the band, they’re garage meets alt-country meets The Fugs. They’re loose as a goose and sound like they’re just jamming in their garage, and Sambol’s vocals ride roughshod over the band’s always intriguing yet simple songs. True, Sambol’s lyrics can’t compete with Dylan’s, and there are few memorably surrealistic phrases (“Pull that drummer out from behind that bottle/Hit him with a pie that smells”) of the sort that fill The Basement Tapes on The Strange Boys’ Be Brave. But Sambol’s vocals and the band’s scruffy and carefree spirit have The Basement Tapes written all over them.
“I See” opens with a sprightly harmonica, after which Sambol sings about seeing faces everywhere and how “the glove’s on the other foot now.” Meanwhile the band rock and rolls behind him, playing a simple and lovely melody that you’ll swear you’ve heard before but will never figure out where. In the slow-to-open “A Walk on the Bleach” Sambol announces over a simple guitar pattern that he’s going back to Africa; then the song stops and the band kicks into interstellar overdrive, with a simple and frantic guitar riff driving well above the speed limit while another guitar riff rides atop it like a surf board rides a wave, and just like that it’s over. “Be Brave” opens with a surf guitar emanating from a garage while Sambol and the vocalists who echo him give the song an R&B feel. Then DeWitt comes in on sax and plays first one raw solo, and then another, and they never fail to bring a smile to my face. “You gotta be brave” sing the backing vocalists as Sambol smears his vocals all over the place.
“Friday in Paris” is a catchy tune on which somebody contributes a cool organ riff while Sambol does his thing, until a neat guitar playing single notes joins the keyboard; it’s a great songs as is its follow-up “Between Us,” which might as well be a Basement Tape, what with its messy opening and Robbie Robertson reverb-heavy guitar riff. Mid-tempo, the song has the same haunted feel as the songs on those tapes recorded so long ago. A guitarist solos and it’s raw; Sambol sings, “When you realize you don’t have to make sense/To anyone else/It helps it helps it helps” while the backing vocalists come in singing “Aaaaaah” with that Sambol’s (or is it Enslow’s?) organ coming along for the ride. “Da Da” is more of a rocker, but a rocker on its own terms; it kicks along, Sambol as unintelligible as ever, while that guitar hits its marks and somebody (Sambol or Enslow again) plays the piano.
“Night Might” includes a great and raw guitar and is a great rocker straight from the garage; Sambol howls as the band slows the tempo then hits the harmonica as it picks up again. The only problem is the damn song should be longer; it’s over before you know it. “Dare I Say” opens with Sambol singing, “There goes my mouth/I was just thinking and it came out” to the accompaniment of acoustic guitar and piano. He goes on to sing, “You were taught all wrong/But it’s not your fault/You just came along/You just came along,” before ending the tune on a cryptic note singing, over that great piano, “If on a clear (unintelligible) day/I get blown away/Look no further than the CIA.” “You Can’t Only Love When You Want To” is a slow and simple tune, with Sambol singing to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar. At about the halfway point the guitar commences juddering, before the song returns and then fades away.
“Laugh at Sex, Not Her” opens on a simple repeated guitar note, with Sambol singing about his friends having sex in the other room. Then the guitar comes in again with some muffled drumming, the tempo changes and changes back, and Sambol sings, “I smile to think/Sex is like laughter/You do it differently with different people” and “Feels good, but it’s not always possible” while the melody moves along, unchanging to the end. “All You Can Hide Inside” is a slow and enchanting tune with a lovely melody—a simple guitar figure and Sambol’s vocals combine, via musical alchemy, into a lovely little ditty. Finally, The sparse and mid-tempo “The Unsent Letter” opens with some pounding piano and Sambol’s scratchy vocals, and sends me. Some organ comes in, Sambol contributes to sing, and it’s over.
The Strange Boys play a music so simple and primal it’s easy to overlook its quality. And their spirit! Great music makes your heart swell, and I never fail to feel just that when I listen to “I See” or “Between Us.” Like the Felice Brothers—another band that is effortlessly keeping the spirit of Big Pink alive—The Strange Boys don’t imitate the Basement Tapes. They simply capture the same fugitive spirit, and play with a raucous joy that transcends the songs to become a primer on what one can achieve with simplicity, camaraderie, and a sense of adventurousness. They’re not so well known but they should be, because the kind of music they play is as low key as it is powerful. Check them out. I’m begging you.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
