Stranger Danger

Ramshackle garage-punks The Strange Boys on why you shouldn’t trust their Wikipedia page…

In the searing afternoon heat of downtown Austin on the first day of South By Southwest, three Strange Boys sit at a picnic table in the yard of a venue just off bustling Sixth Street, the throbbing centre of this city’s music scene. On the side of the venue, an old-fashioned reader board straight out of 1950s America spells out their name in chunky black letters, an appropriately anachronistic memento from a show the previous night. Main Strange Boy Ryan Sambol, his eyes hidden by mirrored shades slowly sucks on a cigarette, while drummer Mike La Franchi and vocalist/saxophonist Jenne Thornhill-deWitt sit opposite. It feels something like the start of a David Lynch movie – pure Americana with a salient twist of weird. As if on cue, a random stranger approaches from behind as they’re speaking their names – for transcription purposes later – into the recorder that sits on the table. “Man, do you think I could get a cigarette off of ya?” the stranger asks Ryan in a laconic stoned Southern drawl. “What’s your name?” ask Jenna and Ryan simultaneously as Ryan reaches into his pack of Marlboros. “What’s that?” “What’s your name?” Jenna repeats. “My name’s Calvin,” says Calvin, clearly unaware of what’s happening. “I smoked…”he says unsteadily. “I just finished smoking….” “Do you need a light?” asks Jenna. “Yeah, I do.” “Ryan gives Calvin a cigarette and Jenna offers him a light,” narrates Jenna. “It’s a small yellow lighter. It still works.” “Cheers,” says Calvin and slowly walks away. The band, who are based, loosely, in Austin (Jenna and Mike don’t live here), wave their goodbyes. They insist that Austin and its people aren’t usually like that, that things change when SXSW is on. “It gets a lot darker,” says Jenna. “That guy would be coming over here with scars on his face, hospital wristbands on him.
He’d asking for more than a cigarette. He’d be asking for his life back.” Welcome to the weird world of The Strange Boys. As it turns out, this is the last time that The Strange Boys – completed by Ryan’s brother Philip on bass, Greg Enlow on guitar and Tim Presley (vocals and laughs, according to their MySpace page) – will exist in their current line-up. After tonight’s show, at their label Rough Trade’s artist showcase, Jenna will fly back to LA to get married. It means she won’t be in the band, who begin an extensive American and European tour the next day. “Jenna’s going to take a little break from the group from tomorrow,” explains Ryan, “and then we’re going to go on. Our line-up will probably change some more too. Strange Boys used to be me and Matt [Hammer], but then he left. And now…” He trails off. Are the band aware that, on Wikipedia, it talks about “drummer and only talented founding member Matt Hammer being replaced”? The band chuckle and say no, then go on to talk about fake Wikipedia entries they’ve created themselves. The next day, though, that pejorative slight has been removed from their entry. It’s unlikely that it bothers them too much, though; The Strange Boys are a band who live and create music purely on their own terms. Their recent second album, the rather fabulous ‘Be Brave’, is an untamed, ramshackle collection of anachronistic, timeless, left of centre and, of course, ever so slightly strange songs which more than speak for themselves. Which is lucky, because when it comes to their music – the actual songs and sounds that The Strange Boys make, rather than the personalities and lives and random thoughts of the people that make it – they don’t seem particularly keen to talk about or explain the ideas and motivations behind it. “I don’t know,” says Ryan, when asked where the ideas for their distinctive sound comes from. “I don’t know. They’re just songs. They’re just songs.” He sounds genuinely stumped, and maybe a little confused. But then perhaps it’s just the heat. Or just that, genuinely, he doesn’t know. That it’s just who he is. Who they are. In the hot Austin sun, in this dilapidated yard, that actually makes perfect sense. They’re The Strange Boys and that’s the music they make.
That’s it.

‘Be Brave’ is out now on Rough Trade.