Beauxregard

Beauxregard has always been a band that looks to the past for musical inspiration. That much is obvious within a few minutes of listening to their songs.

But figuring out just what era is informing their music is where things gets tricky.

Gryphoemia, the follow-up to their excellent 2008 EP, When Balloons Were Sleeves, finds Beauxregard trying on different musical styles like costumes, mixing and matching accessories like an imaginative child playing dress-up with a trunk full of vintage clothing. On the title track, rickety upright piano straight out of a Western saloon meets machine-like beats and a bombastic electric guitar lead. Two tracks later, "Intro/Caroline" incongruously juxtaposes spaghetti Western timpani percussion and minor-key guitars against dance-punk beats—an odd combination of elements repeated again on "Tradition." "High Noon," with its showdown storyline, cements the album's Western theme. And throughout the release, singer J. Quincy Romine's warbly Bowie-meets-Curtis croon takes on so much vibrato that he approaches Broadway melodramatics.

It's a fascinating, ambitious effort, and a worthy one, too—even if the blending of eras at times borders on novelty.