Best of What's Next: Harlem

Photos by Pooneh Ghana

Hometown: Austin, Tex.
Album: Hippies
Band Members: Michael Coomers (vocals, guitar, drums), Curtis O’Mara (vocals, guitar, drums), Jose Boyer (bass)
For Fans Of: Girls, King Khan, The Strange Boys

A band with two lead vocalists runs the risk of occasional conflict, but the tension can be satisfying when properly harnessed. For Michael Coomers and Curtis O’Mara, the dual voices of Austin, Tex.‘s ramshackle rock trio Harlem, lyrical discordance is often thanks to the opposite sex . “My version of women is the harsher one,” admits Coomers, who opens Hippies, the band’s sophomore album (out now), scratchily singing, “Someday soon you’ll be on fire / And you’ll ask me for a glass of water / I’ll say no, you can just let that shit burn.”

“First off, I love women,” Coomers backpedals. “They’re awesome and I was raised by one. [But] I guess Curtis has this sort of weird romantic thing about him. He falls in love with every single woman he’s ever met. It’s easier for me to write songs that are vaguely burns.”

One of O’Mara’s finest two-minute, tool-shed pop blasts is "Beautiful and Very Smart,” from Harlem’s 2009 self-released debut, Free Drugs, a lo-fi love letter full of tracks just begging to be thrown on a mixtape for a beloved Pavement fan. The song also appears on Matador’s recent Casual Victim Pile, a compilation of Austin-based up-and-comers assembled by label honcho Gerard Cosloy, who signed Harlem to a multi-album deal last summer. Coomers recalls running into the Matador head at earlier shows: “He would occasionally say vaguely positive stuff that would make us uncomfortable, like, ‘You guys belong on a big stage.’ I was like ‘Cool, thanks, wanna buy a T-shirt?’”

The partnership allowed for the band to spend several weeks in Costa Mesa, Calif., to make Hippies, a far cry from the $300 they spent to record Free Drugs at Coomers’ mom’s house. The new album is shot through with fast-moving guitar swatches, off-kilter narratives and shouted melodies that are themselves beautiful and very smart. O’Mara’s “Torture Me” recalls early Elvis Costello at his rawest, and Coomers’ “Gay Human Bones” is a righteous, psychedelic basketball story. And another track is inspired by one of the band’s new Matador labelmates. “Secretly I kinda like Cat Power,” Coomers admits. “One of the songs on our new record was titled ‘Cat Power’ just because it has a guitar riff that kind of rips off her. She wouldn’t know it. Music’s math. You’re gonna hit patterns. Sort of like something she would do, only way crappier."