I was putting together an artiste-financed compilation of local indie artistes and Shahzad Hameed kept insisting I check out a band with a kid called Shahzad Noor Butt. The only problem was Shahzad Hameed could not correctly remember what the band was called. Add to that, the internet was working at a snail’s pace and I was getting a tad irritated googling ‘Shahzad Noor Butt and the Drunks’ and not getting anywhere. Yet we persisted, and after a longwinded process we ended up bookmarking the band’s MySpace page (http://www.myspace.com/ thepoortherichthewelloff) for later reference.

A couple of days later, almost on a passing whim, I checked the band out. What I heard explained why Shahzad Hameed had insisted I make the effort: this was the best Pakistani band I had never heard of.

The sound of the band was unlike anything I had heard in recent memory from a Pakistani band. The vibe was incredibly organic: blues, jazz, murder ballads, avant-garde soundscapes, all melded into quite a unique mélange. One of their songs, The Great Uncertain, produced by Zeejah Fazli of Islamabad, was a most mind-blowing original and accessible bluesy number. The closest I can describe the rest of the songs is the more recent Dylan albums crossed with Nick Cave/Drake and Eno. Plus the band seemed to have a sense of humour. On their MySpace page, they claimed to sound like jaleybis (they don’t). For their reasons for making music, they stated: “Pakistan was dying. We decided it needed to be saved... so we got together and did nothing about it.” Overall they were literate and intelligent, and despite being so, never unconvincing.

When I met them for the first time, I found that this was also the most irritatingly abstruse band I had ever come across. A youthful duo of Shahzad Noor Butt and Zain Ahsan, they were thankful that I had looked them up, but did not want to be a part of the compilation (Ali Noor, Shahzad Hameed and Qayaas were all on board) as they wanted to concentrate on getting international recognition. I admit I was non-plussed.

First impressions aside, I kept bumping into the duo around town several times thereafter. It helped that I had some basic recording equipment at home since over the next month, I got to hear Shahzad Hameed jam up a funk number with Shahzad Noor Butt (provisionally titled The Two Shahzads or From the Gutter looking up at the Stars, the number may find free release if ever it gets mixed).

Each successive meeting revealed the keen intelligence of the duo more and more. While Zain tended to stay more in the background, Shahzad was the confident one. The song they worked on was called Pigeons and Sea Serpents. The song told the story of unusual things happening to a husband who goes out for the groceries and comes back to find the missus in pari delicto (in equal fault) and about what follows then.

In hearing them play, I saw that the duo is startlingly fluid guitar players. They have a unique take on lyrics. Each is an accomplished songwriter in his own right. Zain, who seems to do most of their production, was clearly brilliant at it. They are also some of the most startlingly original musicians in Pakistan for Pakistan. One can recognise their foreign influences but musically they are like no one in Pakistan we have had before.

One can also see how live, most of the commercial-music oriented listening audience would be non-plussed by them. Yet, Ali Noor saw the duo perform and mentioned that, “they were brilliant live!” True to form, when I mention this to Shahzad the next time I meet, he contradicts Noor, “No, we’re not. We were all over the place.” In that, the band is a strange schizophrenic mix of confidence and self-effacing lack of confidence and that makes them all the more fascinating.

In the end, that is perhaps typical of the band: Those in the know seem to be blown away by them, even though at times the band itself might seem to disagree.