With a better name and some behind-the-scenes help, Gringo Star makes a play for the big time.

By the looks of things, Gringo Star is doing everything correctly. They write exceptional songs, instantly catchy tunes that get in and out with such concision they often bear repeating.

Best of all, they play live well. They tour diligently, at times obsessively. Singer/multi-instrumentalist Nick Firguiele says at one point they averaged about 200 shows per year. "Early on we kinda moved out of the house and circled the country," he says in an interview.

They've released a handful of discs, whether or not a label was around to do the releasing. They have an eye-catching live show — each of the four guys takes turns swapping vocal, guitar, bass, drums and keyboard duties. And over time, their songwriting and playing has grown tighter and more focused.

So why haven't they gotten their due? Why is it that once again — as one writer or another at this paper has done nearly every time in the past four years the band has come to New Haven — we find we still need to explain who they are and why you should give a damn? WTF, New Haven?

Chalk it up to the fact that their chosen style — pysch-pop, moderately garage-rocking, full of chord progressions and melodic turns seemingly absorbed from oldies radio — is unhip. But in reality, while resolutely and refreshingly un-hipsterish, their sound is about as perma-fashionable as a pair of Levi's jeans. Or chalk it up to the fact that for several years they had another, clunkier name (A Fir-Ju Well) that didn't make sense unless one knew the surname of half the band (Furgiuele).

They've been touring under the more memorable moniker Gringo Star for two years now, releasing a self-titled EP in 2007. Or chalk it up to their hometown Atlanta, a city whose rock scene hasn't traditionally been closely watched by outsiders, except that changed a couple years ago. Seriously: What does a hard-working, creative young band have to do to catch a break?

It may finally be Gringo Star's time. Their new album, All Y'All, comes out Nov. 4 on the band's imprint My Anxious Mouth Records. It's direct and snappy. You can actually hear the reverberations of the studio. Ben Allen, who's recorded Gnarls Barkley and Christina Aguilera, produced.

"He actually lives around the corner from a few of us," says Furgiuele. A few New York City–area shows, including one at Maxwell's in Hoboken with fellow Atlantans Black Lips, led to Gringo Star hooking up with a public relations agency. Later in October, the band's playing the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival.

"We've got some labels from the West Coast flying out to CMJ," Furgiuele says. And they're getting noticed by some prominent blogs. "It's funny," he says. "We're getting these write-ups calling us art-punks or whatever."

Or whatever, indeed. Maybe that's one of the reasons it's taken Gringo Star a while to catch on: It's not as easy to pigeonhole them, genre-wise. While so many bands working in retro styles go all-out in aping the sounds, recording techniques and even lingo of a bygone era, Gringo Star makes its sound current and timely — kitsch it ain't.

"I don't think we ever attempted to sound like throwback-crossed-with-the-future," Furguiele explains. "I grew up listening to music from the '50s — Sam Cooke, Buddy Holly — more than I was listening to '80s music."

Gringo Star returns to New Haven, a frequent stop on their semi-frequent tours, on Sunday. Furguiele's accumulated some stories about the Elm City by this point.

"We got thrown out of some Yale dorms for taking a shower," he points out. "I guess it was a girls' floor or something. [New Haven] was the first town we started busking."

In the A Fir-Ju Well days, the band would split up around a town's streets during the day or on off days to play for passersby, gas money and for fun. "There were these two girls booking our shows," he explains. "Not the best booking agents. There were these gaps between shows." Last time Gringo Star played in New Haven, the Furgiuele brothers were spotted with acoustic guitars downtown in the mid-afternoon.

It's uncertain where All Y'All will take Gringo Star, but after bearing witness to so many of their effortlessly catchy retro-pop tunes and electrically charged live sets, one hopes it's somewhere they deserve to be. And let's hope they'll be back in New Haven in another six or nine months. Hey — we've been able to count on that so far.

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