A piano player wobbles precariously over his keyboard, furiously pounding keys and shouting incoherently into a microphone. An accordion player jerks her head forward and backward oddly every few seconds. A man next to her blows a whistle until he turns red in the face. A drummer bashes away at cymbals mercilessly and a bass player thump-thumps through all of it.

This is Brave Combo, and the band definitely lived up to its namesake Monday evening at Akin Auditorium.

The Denton-based quintet rocked MSU non-stop for an hour and twenty minutes with its atypical, polka-influenced sound.

But to call Brave Combo a polka band is to belie its ability to play – and its immaculate execution of – almost every musical style under the sun. Throughout the course of the set, the band delved into blues, rock, tango, samba, jazz, cha-cha, rumba and other genres most people’s musical palettes aren’t trained enough to even recognize.

Suffice it to say this: Brave Combo can play anything. But its performance did leave some room for improvement.

The band’s stage presence – at least at the beginning of the set – could probably have used some work.

Some on stage banter between band members came off as trite and superfluous. At other junctures, though, front man Carl Finch was able to get almost every person in the room to participate in the music. (The Chicken Dance seemed to be the crowd favorite of the evening.)

Also, some songs found the group just a little off time.

On a few numbers, the melody instruments rushed ahead about a quarter-beat of the rhythm section. It made for a muddy sound during a couple of the selections.

At best, the band was brilliant that evening. At worst, it was cacophonous.

In all, it was still a world-class act. And it has the Grammys behind it to prove that.

Brave Combo kicked the evening off with an original song Finch described as a “demonic rumba.” This juxtaposition of styles proved to be a mainstay of the band’s set.

Generally, the fast-paced, upbeat-heavy songs in the vein of rumba emote happiness and well being in listeners. But with this rumba, the band took the upbeat sound, screwed with it, blew it up, added some minor chords and presented the final, chewed-up version to audience.

The strange mixture brings two thoughts to mind.

The first: “That was incredible.”

The second: “What the hell was that noise?” Maybe the best way to describe the band would be like this – this is the music that would be playing during a race riot at a circus. In the rain. While all of the carnies are on acid.

This Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde sound makes more sense if you take into account the appearance of the band members.

Finch, who sings, plays keyboard, guitar and accordion wore all black except for a bright red velvet fedora that attempted to contain his mass of long, gray hair. His pockmarked face has probably led to more comparisons between him and David Carradine than he would care to admit. He looked like the oldest member of the group.

Bass player Little Jack Melody sported what looked like a bathrobe over a simple white shirt. His messy hair made him look like a cross between Kramer and The Dude. He feigned playing Kevin Eubanks to Finch’s Jay Leno in between songs, but he was much better at playing the four strings than being the side man.

The accordion player, who was identified solely as Jenny, is just a little bigger than her instrument. But instead of being consumed by the huge squeezebox strapped to her chest, she owned it. And she looked sexy doing it, as proven in a song she wrote, Seduction. She looked so comfortable playing the instrument, in fact, that most audience members probably forgot that this was the first time any of them had even seen an accordion played. She didn’t look one day older than 30.

Woodwind player Jeffrey Barnes is a portly fellow, but played clarinet, flute, piccolo and two different saxophones with as much precision as a brain surgeon performing a lifesaving operation. At one point, he shared with the audience that he raised a baby raccoon and kept it as a pet when he was younger. If that ain’t quirky, then I don’t know what is.

The percussionist, Alan Emert, didn’t share much about himself with the audience. He did, however, go into a lengthy diatribe about a three-eighth note pickup into a first measure of a famous Led Zeppelin song. (It was supposed to be a joke, but you could tell that it kind of wasn’t.) And the Zeppelin namedrop was kind of confusing, because Emert didn’t look old enough to have even been alive during the band’s heyday, much less playing drums.

It was pretty obvious that all five of these guys are nerds, too. What’s worse, they’re music nerds. And it would’ve been impossible for them to navigate the inexplicably difficult nature of their song choices if they weren’t.

Case in point: midway through the show, an audience member requested the band “play something French.”

The band’s response: no sweat.

Now that’s talent.

In fact, Brave Combo sang in German, Italian, English and Greek, to name a few languages, during its set.

Another thing the band should be commended for is being so damn likable onstage.

The members weren’t exactly meek (in fact, Finch was fairly authoritative when it came to encouraging crowd participation in songs). They just seemed, well, like nice people. And it went a long way to gaining support from the audience.

Speaking of the audience, the front and second rows in Akin were barren during the show.

An approximate headcount of the room would lead one to believe this was the most sparsely attended Artist Lecture event of the season. It should be noted, however, that Wichita Falls was under a tornado watch when the band was playing, which could have affected attendance.

Regardless, the band played as if it were putting on a show for a packed house. The pacing was quick, rollicking and in-your-face. Attendants were kept on the edge of their seats and no one dared yawn.

Though the set was paced pretty well throughout, Brave Combo seemed, at times, to lack significant dynamic control during the actual songs (i.e. one entire song was soft and subtle and another song was balls-to-the-wall loud). Some of the higher-decibel numbers could have been far more effective with softer sections to even them out. This is really just a minor gripe.

In all, Brave Combo put on an excellent performance. Dynamics and tempo could use some polishing, but that stuff’s hard to do onstage anyway. The band played an interesting, exciting set that made them one of the best Artist Lecture guests yet.