Most rock music now has some artsy edge to it that instantly makes it clear that whoever is fronting the group has some an ego large enough to douse other individuals opinion of them. That’s apparently just how musicians are – well not all of ‘em. But if you can fill a bar with a hundred people or so that paid to watch you play guitar or whatever, that’s probably understandable.

A few cliques of bands have been able to avoid this particular modern musical trapping. But not too many. Out of Athens, Ga during the ‘90s the Elephant Six folks really were able to remain rather human during their rise to indie acclaim. That’s probably not the last instance of such personas, but considering the new agish Dark Meat has been making the rounds with Indian head gear and war whoops of jazz abandon, it only makes sense that some other folks would have, by now, figured out how to walk in similarly warn tracks.

What makes Dark Meat remarkable – or relatively so at least – is that the enormous group includes a few back up singers and a horn section in addition to its basic rock set up. It’s like an indie rock revue of sorts. The Polyphonic Spree tread upon roughly the same territory, but unfortunately sought to include some ridiculous religious references with their collective garb. But counting some folks from that same Athens collective is San Francisco’s Still Flyin’. And they don’t dress up too much – even though head bands can’t be excused.

But in this constructed, lackadaisical attitude towards the intellectual and upiddy bent of rock stars, Still Flyin’ ends up becoming the dumb hippies of the genre. Maybe that’s too harsh, but seriously, if you include “high fives” in a lyric, you might need a song writing partner – I hear Van Dyke Parks is for hire nowadays.

The group, that includes a horn section in mysteriously similar fashion to Dark Meat, might be a bit more musically adept than its southern brethren. Some of those horn charts sound pretty dinky, but one could account for that by figuring that it fits in with some lo fidelity recording techniques – and no, not lo-fi as in the pseudo genre that people have begun to pretend to care about of late.

Still Flyin’, though, instead of incorporating folk, free jazz or punk into their rock music draws as much from rhythmic ideas set down by the Talking Heads as from Jamaican up and down funk. The lead off track from their first disc, “Never Gonna Touch The Ground,” tries to dig deep and grab some dub but really ends up sounding like a third wave ska band cutting the tempo. The song, which is pretty representative of what goes on throughout the rest of he disc, works in a slow manner, sports a huge chorus and a heavy bass line.

Dub Narcotic Sound System seems to be an easy comparison to make – musically at least. But again lyrically, there’s a pretty enormous chasm. So even if the music here might be a bit ahead of the curve for the indie rock set, there’s still some work to be done before Still Flyin’ sounds like much more than a BBQ jam band on tour.