clever songs with a touch of the '60s

Pumpkin Pie Crustacean (Faye Records)

The Boorays

By Kory Wilcoxson

The title is an eyecatcher and the music behind it is an earcatcher, as off-the-wall and quirky as a...well, a pumpkin pie crustacean.

The Boorays have a hard-to-find combination: a sharp wit and a knack for writing inescapable songs, much like oh, say, Too Much Joy. They're funny without being goofy or sounding like a fluke.

They also draw from a dozen musical sources. "Grocery Girl" opens with a "Blitzkrieg Bop" guitar riff and screams into a song about a man in love with his teenage checkout girl. He warns her not to get too attached because "it won't be long before our love reaches its expiration date."

The style of the '60s lives in these tracks. "Catch Me, Keep Me" is straight out of the Dave Clark Five songbook, and the riffs of "Remember This" crash like a Beach Boy wave on the surf. It gives the Boorays a familiar canvas on which to paint their peculiar stories.