San Francisco experimental trio the Bad Hand seems like the kind of group that’ll try anything once. On This Is No Time for Modesty, the band’s staple rock instrumental base of guitar, Rhodes piano, and drums gets invaded by a gaggle of other genres and sounds, resulting in an ambitious mix of kitchen-sink sonic collages with varying degrees of success.

The band certainly offers enough surprises to satisfy anyone bored with the verse-chorus-verse same-old same-old, as the musicians follow a slew of paths within the album and on the songs themselves. Just when you begin to brace yourself for an all-instrumental record, “Hell Bent” drops in soft, girly vocals; or dirgy grunge falls into good ol’ Southern blues on “Then He Tried to Kiss Me”; or an interlude of fart-like kazoo sounds (“Short Door”) creeps into the batch.

Some of the tracks that fail to catch on weave together so many melodic and genre-hopping fragments that they leave listeners with little to grasp onto. The occasionally rough mixes, as on the hard-rock mishmash “How to Know When” and on the tail end of the disjointed “South Door,” which awkwardly melds a church organ with Southern blues guitar, can make one wonder: Are these guys all playing the same song?

But the band is legitimately enjoyable when it tones it down a few notches and sticks to one groove, like on “En Attenant De Baiser,” a proggy swirl of fuzzy guitars and shifting time signatures that drifts into funky jazz percussion and discordant piano tinkers; “The Twist,” which melds a paced electro pulsing with rainforest flutes and romantic whispers; and the best track, “Lo Ha,” a somber acoustic tremolo piece blended with funereal violin for a chilled out and downright lovely ambiance.

Perhaps most admirably, This Is No Time for Modesty showcases a band with oodles of energy that, when focused, can traverse a range of music and still pull it off — most of the time.

Hometown: San Francisco
Next local show: 2/18, The Makeout Room
Recent release: Time Wrinkle, 2006

Who said young white dudes and dudettes from San Francisco can’t play real reggae? It was you, wasn’t it? Still Flyin’ aren’t rastas (nor do they pose to be), and their style is more indie-rock-meets-rocksteady-and-dub than straight-up roots, but it’s reggae nonetheless. And boy do they jam it out. So shut it!

Still Flyin’ want you to reach the same hodgepodge nirvana — that freaky-deaky higher consciousness — sought by groups like Architecture in Helsinki (buddies of the band) and Polyphonic Spree. Reggae influences come from the likes of Toots and the Maytals and U-Roy, and the rest is noise plucked from the indie rock atmosphere. Lead singer and songwriter SA Rawls‘ voice is nasal and uneven — a sometimes welcome, sometimes jarring departure from the warm, steady tones of more traditional reggae singers. A chorus of backup singers occasionally evens him out and adds some punch to the vocals.

Time Wrinkle’s sleeve names no less than 18 people who “made it to the jam” (i.e. appear on the record) and 17 “spiritual members who sadly could not join us” (ghosts, dealers, and influences?). The recording (released this past July on Oakland’s Antenna Farm Records), is Still Flyin’s debut and includes only six songs. Thus far they’ve been primarily a live entity, all about messy reggae energy and unfettered fun. But the beautiful chaos of their live show doesn’t translate to the CD as well as one might hope. Maybe before the next recording, they can take more time to work on songwriting. After all, the record’s strongest hook (the horn riff in “Coupla Smokies”) was lifted from OutKast’s reggae-liscous “Spottieottiedopaliscious” — a killer song in its own right — then slowed down and lo-fi’d just a bit.

TOTAL HAMMJAMM!
-In April, the group heads off to Europe for another tour including shows in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
-Time Wrinkle was recorded by Jason Quever of SF indie pop group Papercuts. He has also worked with Portland’s uber-sensitive Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.
-The record was also released on vinyl. Its B-side contains six dub versions of Still Flyin’ songs.
-Click here to see a cool homemade music video for “Rope Burn” at YouTube.