Harlem

Too many garage rock revivalists take the revival part of the contract awfully seriously: They don skinny ties and silly vests, introduce their baby to their whoa-oh-ohs, drape some era-appropriate fuzz from a few power cords, and figure that’ll take care of it.

Harlem, however? Harlem seems to be chuckling right in the face of such period pieces and such self-serious, new-idea-averse revivalism. The slack, jokey, catchy as all hell Tucson-born, Austin-bred gadabouts won quite a few fans off the back of their breezy, tons of fun 2008 debut Free Drugs;-) (truly, no winky face has ever belonged in an album title quite like that one), which caught the eye of the one guy in Austin you want in your corner: Gerard Cosloy of Matador Records, who quickly snapped up the band and will issue their similarly delirious sophomore set Hippies this April.

They do tender, raucous, and silly with equal aplomb and complete ease, often within the same tune. Take, for instance, Hippies’ “Gay Human Bones,” about a basketball team that somewhat inexplicably shares its name with the song’s title, sporting an unlikely hook you’ll nevertheless carry around with you as the day unfolds. Lucky for us, Harlem’s got more hooks than they know what to do with, plus a not-so-secret weapon in lead singer Michael Coomer’s tangled, faux-naif pipes. Harlem’s rep as a live act precedes them, and onstage, they’re every bit as strange and at least twice as sweaty as their songs would suggest. —Paul Thompson