Haircuts and Tuff Luff

It's easy to write the Unicorns (Nick Diamonds and Alden Ginger) off as a silly novelty act -- they have three songs about ghosts, two with the word "Tuff" in the title, and one about a harrowing medical condition called "Jellybones."

But three months after the release of Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, the Unicorns have become the darlings of indie music, the band whose album everyone wants and whose recent concert at the Middle East had a line at the box office that stretched out the door.

There's something about these two self-described "young-uns" from Montreal that makes them so irresistible that normally reserved concert-goers would wait outside in the Cambridge cold to see them. Their style is a mixture of goofy, childish groups like the Moldy Peaches and unhinged, frantic, Moog-centered bands like Whirlwind Heat, neither of which have received as much critical acclaim or fan support as the Unicorns.

One of their songs, "Child Star" degenerates into back-and-forth bickering: "'I'm still a big, big star.' 'No, you're not.' 'Yes, I am.' 'No, you're not.' 'Yes, I am.' 'No, you're not.'" The tin whistle at the beginning of "Sea Ghost" is somewhat awkwardly whimsical, and the song "The Clap," combined with their on-stage entreaty to "wear a condom," seems like a cheap sex joke.

The thing is, kids today love irony, and the Unicorns are no different from their peers. Despite the band's cutesy name, bubble-lettered album art, and slightly deranged on-stage presence (during a recent show, Ginger didn't show up, so Diamonds enlisted the help of several homeless people to play backup instruments), they are versatile musicians, who take turns on vocals and switch off instrument duties (both can play guitar, bass, and keyboard). Their melodies are infectious, which is a cruel joke if you like to hum the songs that are stuck in your head; after all, no one can look cool trying to replicate the electronically-produced opening to "Jellybones."

Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? works because the Unicorns understand how to balance their absurdity well enough that it's not a gimmick. They can be silly, but they're always smart: the fighting in "Child Star" is ridiculous, but it sounds just like what you would expect from a kid, and the sadly whined "No, I didn't," perfectly captures a child losing an argument. They don't try to get political (except for once in "Tuff Luff": "Hey nuclear war/we're in a hotbed of trouble") but they can adroitly reference poetic devices: "Let's make like a couplet/like two pairs of lips." In fact, the Unicorns have an excellent vocabulary; various songs contain the phrases "are you visceral," "driving intent," and "genuflect in my presence."

Their seemingly quirky musical choices are sensible, too. That weird whistle in "Sea Ghost" is nautical and fits the ocean theme of the song. What sounds like an editing mistake in "Ready to Die" (a cough at the end) actually fits the context of the song. The sound effects verge on novelty, but they still work -- if the keyboardist from Flock of Seagulls didn't take himself and his hair so seriously, he and his counterpart from A-Ha might have spawned something like the Unicorns.

Above all, they're fun to listen to. Diamonds and Ginger play different characters and put on different voices from song to song: a plaintive cry in "Ghost Mountain," a bizarre approximation of machismo in "I Was Born (a Unicorn)," a joyful take on Simon and Garfunkel's "Lie lie lie" in "Les Os." It turns out that their song titled "The Clap" is not a sexual reference after all, but is actually about clapping. The whole album plays with your expectations, sometimes giving you something you never would have guessed, sometimes giving you what you should have guessed, but didn't.

In "Let's Get Known," the Unicorns plead, "Say, let's get known/if we keep it up/we'll show the haters/it's gonna be soon, not later./Hey, let's get known/if we work real hard/we can buy some matching/clothes for our live shows."

By now, their prophecy has come true, down to the matching pink suits. it combines legitimate musical talent with fun lyrics and melodies that allow music fans to actually laugh at their music again.