Social Hour likes mingling with offbeat-rock crowd

Anyone who’s spent time in Austin, Texas, the past few years has probably seen the T-shirt and bumper sticker popular down there: “Keep Austin Weird.” The Bright Light Social Hour, an Austin quartet that played at the Middle East on Tuesday, has taken the advice to heart.

Though still a young group, the Social Hour looked and sounded like they’d crawled out of a 1971 time warp, harking back to the era when all the hairy hippie bands got Marshall stacks and started pummelling the blues.

Hugely popular at home, the band swept this year’s Austin Music Awards. Tuesday night marked the first time they’d ever played outside of the South.

The audience of about 100 included quite a few Austin transplants. The band conjured up an era when hard rockers had more groove, less finesse, better drugs and more active sex lives. The latter two were dealt with in a 10-minute cover of Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” which took a few liberties with the lyrics but maintained the macho bluster and stomping riffage of the original.

The band also looked the part, with everyone sporting shoulder-length hair and lead singer/bassist Jack O’Brien in a chest-baring V-neck T-shirt.

And they took time between songs to ask, Paul Stanley-style, if everyone was feeling all right and truly ready to rock tonight.

But things never got too campy, thanks to their strong playing and solid material. “Shanty” opened the set with a near-disco backbeat, harmonies straight out of Vanilla Fudge, and an extended slide guitar workout from lead player Curtis Roush. “Garden of the Gods” brought in some Yes/Rush art-rock moves, and the set finished with a suitably furious “Young Man’s Blues” (by Mose Allison by way of The Who, complete with manic drum fills). You didn’t get the impression that the band was self-consciously retro — this was their own, offbeat definition of rock ’n’ roll.

Local band the Sound of Growing Up was a solid if mismatched opener, recalling ’90s indie-rock at its most earnestly tuneful. Playing the third slot was Brooklyn, N.Y., songwriter Allison Weiss, whose solo acoustic set had moments of whimsy and poignancy. She also had a fan base that came specifically for her set.