But on the third listen, it suddenly made sense: the dark arpeggiating tones and sweet falsetto melodies.
As it turns out, the two men lurking behind that warped, falsetto funk and TV On the Radio moodiness were formerly indie band Born Blonde, and pupils at Latymer Upper School (an affluent west London private school) who signed to Mercury Records in 2010.
Also, there were so many testosterone-fuelled voices back then, mainly because of the influence of the blues, but Smokey's light falsetto was different.
Sadly the men failed to follow Saunders' lead by keeping their shirts on, and Winters then belted out a falsetto almost as wobbly as Spencer's midriff.
And it's yet another Aussie band, Sydney's Panama, at 80 with Always, which boasts falsetto vocals and a somewhat Bruce Hornsby-esque piano.
His two main instruments are a jittery accordion and a screeching, otherworldly falsetto that is best known for scaring little kids in "Shockheaded Peter", a musical based on ten terrifying 19th-century German children's stories.But Mr Jacques's band is definitely not suitable for children.
To prove it, I even bought a few CDs.The last song of the night was a cringe-inspiring cover of the Bee Gees' classic "Stayin' Alive", half-shouted in falsetto by a man resembling an Albanian truck driver.
It was hugely successful, first in the 1960s with folksy hits such as "Massachusetts" and "New York Mining Disaster 1941", and then as the falsetto disco kings of the 1970s.The lower tier was the insatiable song-writing for other performers.
His good looks, sweet falsetto and trick of yodelling caused a storm, even before his great triumph: a recording of "Marie-Louise" for the first Congolese record label, Ngoma, which was launched in 1948 by a Greek trader who loved rumba.
First conceived by Axl Rose, the band's leader, in 1994, the work features plenty of the driving rhythms, slashing guitars and screeching falsetto vocals beloved by the band's fans.But it offers little in the way of coherent political discourse, though the title song includes a gratuitous mention of China's banned Falun Gong meditation movement.
Their sound, which featured Anderson's falsetto vocals and Howe's complex guitar supported by Squire's bass and Wakeman's multilayered keyboards, further developed with Close to the Edge (1972) and Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973).
