Ro Sham Beaux Red Piano ***

Ro Sham Beaux – that's rock-paper-scissors to you – are a quartet of young Bostonians, all recently graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, but, judging by their debut album, it's far from the conservatory these boys were reared. Though their jazz training is evident in the high levels of musicianship and improvisation, like all good creative musicians, they have taken what was in their ears already and crafted their own sound, a boisterous collision of jazz, funk, indie rock and punk. Saxophonist Zac Shaiman, keyboardist Luke Marantz, bassist Oliver Watkinson and drummer Jacob Cole operate more like a rock band, with Shaiman as lead singer, placing more emphasis on an overall group sound than on individual virtuosity. Tight but raucous arrangements of their own tunes – the only non-original is the now almost-obligatory cover of a Björk song – lead to loosely improvised passages that have a raw, garage-band atmosphere. rsbmusic.net CORMAC LARKIN