Hot Rock

Perhaps because the group wrote Future Bolt’s eight songs in a close-knit, collaborative atmosphere (Hall says they holed up at Mengerink’s parents’ house last fall and only came out for “food and beer”), the record feels democratic. Sommers’ drums splash hotly underneath keyboard squiggles, droll horn sounds, synth ostinatos and sneaky guitar licks. Also, last year the group lost second guitarist Art Schoulties to law school, which seems to have shifted their textural focus.

From the clattering pattern that underpins “You Burn or You Don’t” to the weird marching-band coda that ends “Where Is the Shore?,” Sommers powers the record. “Thunderbolt” begins with a scratched funk-guitar pattern that gets snatched into blues chords that seem to want to run backward. Rogers hits the uncanny falsetto notes that help define nearly every song. “Thunderbolt” works in a set of beautifully played stop-time breaks festooned with whistles and, at the end, crazily intrusive drums.

“Future Bolt” (the title comes from a Dayton youth sports league) suggests Elvis Costello’s most effective band, The Attractions, with Hall’s rubbery bass bouncing through a relatively straightforward arrangement that turns skewed and sprung halfway through. Like fellow Tennesseans The Features, say, or New York’s Harlem Shakes and The Subjects, Hotpipes tug at pop-music form. There are hints of Eno and Davie Bowie in the fey “A Brain and a Vegetable,” which ends with a hanging piano chord that’s the aural equivalent of prestidigitation.

For all that, Future Bolt never feels like pastiche. The lyrics explore adulthood on the title track, which asserts that cigarettes and whiskey both come from “the factory.” On the other hand, the group respects the rock tradition of indecipherable lyrics on “I Am Better Than You.” Surely Rogers isn’t singing, “You play to clean my boat / Herbal roll your bones / And wake up on my charm,” but that’s what it sounds like.

If the words are (perhaps intentionally) unfathomable, the music’s wit, speed and accuracy add charm to their cryptic tendencies. Every song gives up a bit of detail that demonstrates Hotpipes’ knack for off-kilter arrangements that are funny and unpretentious. The tense structures support words that seem pained, although it’s impossible to ascribe a single mood to most of the songs. “We persist / Don’t mean shit / At all,” Rogers sings on “Thunder Bolt,” which might or might not be sincere.

Future Bolt comes across as guardedly optimistic pop, and no more so than on “The Future Is Where We Belong,” the record’s simplest song. A two-note synth melody drones over a basic rock chord progression. “Forget every trouble and woe,” Rogers sings. In its way, “The Future” is anthemic. Like England’s Art Brut, Hotpipes play fast and loose with rock’s self-image while playing games with genres. There’s never the sense that the band’s extreme formalism takes precedence over the songs, which is an achievement in itself.

There are moments when it would benefit from a slightly more conventional aural palette. The drums often seem to have been captured with needles in the red. This sounds like an intentional strategy, and “Thunder Bolt” works beautifully because of the overloaded drum sound. But it would have been equally effective recorded a touch more cleanly.

Still, the song evokes The Sir Douglas Quintet high on morning-glory seeds— honky Tex-Mex blues caught on the fly with a funk pickup band. There’s probably nothing more boring, at this stage of the game, than hyphenated pop music, but these guys avoid that. Future Bolt is pixilated but never foolish. There’s angst here, and Hotpipes are doing their level best to smother it with good intentions.