One can’t help but watch the crowd at a Fujiya & Miyagi show. The music is an orgiastic blend of sedated James Brown rhythms, Booka Shade’s bouncy beats, and the subdued vocal styling of Damo Suzuki. At their gig in Chicago, David Best whispers the band’s name over steady, descending chords, Steve Lewis winds away on his synthesizer, Matt Hainsby strums out airy oscillations from his bass, and an invisible barrier divides the crowd. I lean against the stage, in front of Best; the chords cascade and my head nods to Best’s feet. They divide the room. The right side, inspired by Hainsby’s funkadelic gyrations, bumps and hops around the venue. The left side is contemplative.

They pack in front of Lewis and assess his organ synth sound like a panel of judges. And, ironically, their plaid uniformity suggests the very malaise that Fujiya & Miyagi chant against. While their apparel is uniform, their ages are not. Tweens, teens, yuppies, parents, and possibly grandparents crowd the room. It’s curious that one set of sounds affects one crowd in multiple ways; that the fans of this non-sequitur band vary as much as the tracks on their newest album, Lightbulbs.

Formed in 2000, initially as an instrumental duo in Brighton, UK, their debut album Electro Karaoke in the Negative Style (2002) skipped beneath the radar. After they kicked up their BPMs, incorporated lyrics, and added bassist Matt Hainsby, their sound soon evolved into a pelvis-poppin’, boogie-bouncin’, electro-rock funk. And people took notice. The peripatetic trio found themselves motoring around, more intensely than before, on their first North American tour. Then, in 2008, they expanded their lineup once again with drummer Lee Adams and shortly after released their third album, Lightbulbs. Far from vestigial, the third record is an even greater speciation than their second. Lightbulbs fuses the soul instrumentals of Electro Karaoke and the down-tempo vocals of 2006’s Transparent Things, resulting in a well-balanced variation. And their new crowd-pleasing dynamic is evident. I chatted with Best over the phone as the boys were preparing for a trans-Atlantic flight to Beirut, their next gig. They had just finished their second North American tour. And, although Best reserves his sultry whispering for the stage, his telephone voice is still as sweet as a knickerbocker glory on a hot summer day.

Crawdaddy!: After your second album, you guys became an established indie band, so what did you want to accomplish with your third album?

David Best: We wanted to make a record that was different from Transparent Things. And just sort of continue what we’re doing. The thing with our band is that for the first six, seven years, we didn’t really do much; we weren’t really noticed. So, when Transparent Things came out and a few more people took notice, it was a real stride for us. And we still got that mentality that we just want to write songs and release them. We haven’t got a great big plan of, like, playing the media, or second guessing what we think they’d like. We just make records. It’s a bit cliché, but we just wrote the records that we wanted to write.

Crawdaddy!: There are a few more down-tempo tracks on Lightbulbs, like “Goosebumps.” Was that, at all, a premeditated decision?

Best: Maybe. That was probably the only thing that was premeditated. You know, a lot of my favorite music is slow, sort of melancholy music. I listen to [that] more than, say, upbeat stuff. Our first record was really all down-tempo and we didn’t realize that wasn’t conducive for a performance. Sometimes, even my favorite songs that I listen to at home, I don’t really want to see [played] live because, you know, it just serves its purpose. It’s not really “going out” music. But, with “Goosebumps” we’re, kind of, all really proud of that song. We like it. And for the sake of people being bored, or going to the bathroom… well, we still play it.

It’s a tricky one, people pay money and you want them to have a good time. But, you got to do exactly what you want to do. Because, I think that’s the reason why people like a group in the first place; it’s because they just do what they want to do. So by playing songs like “Goosebumps”, I think we can still do that.

Crawdaddy!: How do you guys create your set lists?

Best: It depends on how long we get to play. For ages and ages, we always felt like [the best opening song] was “Ankle Injuries” because it says the group’s name in the beginning, and it feels like a beginning. But, now we’ve got Lee the drummer onboard, and it started to change ’cause we still have three or four songs that we use a drum machine for. So, we start with the drum machine, then we bring him on and he plays for, like, five songs, and then we have the drum machine when he goes off. So that kind of dictates it. Also, there are some songs we always want to play. We always want to play “Collarbone”, and I always want to play “Pterodactyls” ’cause that’s off the new record and it’s fun. So it’s time and where you are, really.

Crawdaddy!: Why did you and Steve decide to expand with Matt, on bass, and most recently with Lee, on drums?