Americans in France

Chapel Hill trio Americans in France possess a spastic, bouncing-off-the-walls charm. Joining them for a beer would be a hoot because there’s no telling what they might do next. Inviting them over to your house is another matter, though—within five minutes of their arrival, they’d likely have broken something. Fortunately, eardrums are relatively durable, making the chaotic careening confines of the Americans' full-length debut, Pretzelvania, a safe bet.

Unbound by genre, their loose-limbed songs spin off in multiple directions, like channel-surfing teens indulging their ADD. While punky propulsion and jagged, distortion-ridden guitar predominate, this train’s a local stopping everywhere. Whether it’s aping an overzealous cosmetic surgeon on “Nose Job,” or threatening to abduct Ted Nugent, Mindfreak’s Criss Angel and Charles Heston on the bouncy, sometimes spacey and nearly inscrutable “Mkele Mbembe,” their goofy sense of humor and able sense of energy are highly infectious.

They’re at their best on tracks such as the “Ballad of Brandgelina,” which blasts off like a Pixies track with its cries of “poor Jennifer.” It stops to visit Sonic Youth’s pugilistic fuzz (as Casey Cook channels a kittenish Kim Gordon) midway through, before alighting on a ringing riff that could’ve been lifted from Billy Zoom, as singer/guitar Josh Lajoie screams, “Breaking News! New Hairdos!” Lajoie’s nasally, limited vocals—like a cross between Jad Fair and the Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano—won’t win any awards, but they seem oddly appropriate, like a circus barker charged with attracting attention to this wild, wooly and adventurous musical freak show. Step right up. —Chris Parker