The Growlers

Listening to the music of the Growlers is a bit like listening to oldies radio before that format was taken over by music from the ’80s rather than being dominated by classic pop songs from the late ’50s through the mid-’60s. There’s a touch of rockabilly, a hint of early psychedelic garage rock and a dash of surf guitar. It also sounds as though the band’s guitarist learned a trick or ten from Lonnie Donegan. Like the Strange Boys, the Growlers sound out of time, retro in the same sense that there is a retro aesthetic to the films of David Lynch — minus the mind-warping sense of the bizarre, of course. The strangeness of the Growlers is more subtle, tuneful and catchy, but no less eccentric.