Ryan Sambol’s voice is that sort that a listener is warned against before hearing a note of Strange Boys’ music. "Here," a friend may say, handing you a record, "if you can get past the guy’s voice, you’ll be into this." On their debut outing, last year’s The Strange Boys and Girls Club, the band made room for some subtler folk-influenced numbers amidst a mass of garage blues. This time around, the band has reversed the formula and made room for a couple garage rockers on a record filled with folk-influenced confessionals.
While a loose, Dylan-influenced record would have felt like a natural turn for the band, the music on Be Brave, particularly the record’s back half, is stately, measured and suggests Leonard Cohen as a primary influence. This approach pushes Sambol’s voice into the foreground and leaves his detractors with very little to keep them around.
Fortunately for the skeptical, though, "I See" starts the album on a comfortable note, suggesting where the approach not taken could have led them, a mid-tempo, harmonica-led folk rocker reminiscent of late-sixties Kinks album filler. As early as the album’s second track, "A Walk On the Bleach", Strange Boys are setting the tone for what is to follow. Wisely, though, the band puts the listener at ease with a couple more garage-blues workouts, including the standout title track, before setting out firmly on the course that will lead to the record’s final track, "You Can’t Only Love When You Want". A tender and surprisingly durable performance, the song is Sambol’s "Hallelujah", complete with references to seraphim and, in the spirit of "Tower of Song", to a higher compositional spirit, Townes Van Zandt, the younger man’s Hank Williams.
Be Brave is clearly a breakup album, which may go some way toward explaining the solitary figure cut by Sambol on the record’s latter half. If it is a band-breakup album, though, that would be a shame. As accustomed as you may become to Sambol’s voice over the course of Be Brave, and as much as you may admire the discipline and gravity on display, even the most enamored listener will likely be looking forward not just to the next Strange Boys record, but also to one with more Strange Boys on it.
