Harlem

Photo by John Anderson

"What's going on with the Chronicle these days; you guys trying to turn into a smut publication?" asks Harlem's Michael Coomers, driving back to town from an East Coast tour and apparently still perturbed by a reference back in August to his appearance on the cover of the local rag Busted! in Austin. "We're pretty mediocre celebrities at best. ... You might want to run that by somebody's mother next time."

To paraphrase Busted's motto, getting arrested isn't funny, but mug shots inherently are, and Coomers' entry – bleary eyes, bedhead, and matching smirk – is an accurate reflection of Harlem's disheveled pop. The local trio's 2008 debut, Free Drugs, an addictive throwback to 1960s beach party films, the Kinks' Face to Face, and girl-group pop ("Psychedelic Tits"), split evenly between Coomers and band co-founder Curtis O'Mara.

"He writes really killer songs," Coomers says of O'Mara, with whom he splits duties on drums, guitar, and vocals. "I feel like he's got a pseudo-religion he's developed. It's an amalgam of the playing cards he finds on the streets and shit he cuts out of people's hair. I don't necessarily believe everything he says, but I know he does even when he knows it's not true."

Between O'Mara's more romantic odes and Coomers' seedier character sketches, the two make an odd couple, balanced by newly cemented third wheel, bassist Jose Boyer. Harlem perfects that sweet-sour balance on its forthcoming Matador debut, Hippies, which, as evidenced by the band's Cover of the Month Club on MySpace, draws from such diverse acts as Q Lazzarus, the Dixie Cups, and the Flamin' Groovies.

"It's not like we jam," Coomers counters. "I don't know how to do that. Sometime some part of it might be off, and it takes one of the other members humming along or suggesting something. It's just part of this band, I guess."