When I saw David Lynch’s Lost Highway for the first time, I drove myself nuts trying to understand the film’s every twist and turn. I instead should’ve sat back and absorbed the experience, waiting till later to ask the whys and the whos and the “why did that house just implode?”

It’s best to use the same approach for local rock group Good Guys and their new first full length, The Social Engagement. Like Lynch, they specialize in dark, strange, abstract and schizophrenic works of art that don’t ask the consumer to entirely understand their madness. One second its doo-wop, the next Tropicália, the next Mike Patton-inspired avant-metal, and the next a lullaby. Fans of film scores and classical music, Good Guys thankfully always come back to a recognizable common ground in their songs, similar to how Tool has approached their last two albums.

Formed in 2004, Good Guys are led by vocalist, melodica and theremin player Jeremy Johnson and vocalist, guitarist and pianist Tom McLaughlin and rounded out by synthesizer player and trumpeter Greg Beaman, drummer Kyle Sharimataro and bassist Greg Smith.

The Social Engagement is more mature and thought-out than the band’s previous two EPs. Simply, it sounds like they killed themselves working out the absolute best arrangements. Produced by Mike Napolitano and augmented by Mike Dillon and Skerik, the album becomes better the more you listen to it. It’s a hard-worked triumph, to be sure. ANTIGRAVITY sat down with Johnson and McLaughlin at Mojo Coffehouse, just as a cop was about to mow over a pedestrian at Race and Magazine, to talk about Ennio Morricone, Kathleen Turner and, of course, their music. (more…)