The Foghorns sound exhausted. Like, physically exhausted. Delirious. They sound like they've been up for two days and the only way they've found to keep their eyes open is to have a series of sing-alongs that sound, at various times, punchy, wistful, embarrassingly forthright, spiteful, defiant, sorrowful and oddly exuberant. In their manner of languidly drifting folk songs delivered by questionable narrators, the Foghorns often resemble Lambchop, minus the lush orchestration. And plus buckets.

Hailing from Seattle, by way of Brooklyn, by way of Reykjavik, by way of Wisconsin, the Foghorns have clearly picked up some odd influences from desolate places. Using country and folk as a bed, the band adorns its songs with borrowed sounds from punk, new wave, zydeco and Hawaiian music, all tinged with a lo-fi style that can bring to mind Old World field recordings or outsider artists like Daniel Johnston.

"I took a Fulbright Fellowship to go to Iceland, to get out of New York for a while, and once I got there I ended up staying," says lead vocalist Bart Cameron. "It was an enormous change. I was just kind of writing songs in Wisconsin with my friends, hanging out on the fringe of the bluegrass scene, which I didn't really enjoy anyway. (In Iceland) you didn't really have to play one style of music. I got pulled into a bunch of music projects, and when I would play as the Foghorns, I would always do random stuff and it was accepted. I started doing lots of live shows and changing the way I wrote music.

"That whole time, I was also a magazine editor, so while I was making my own music, I was having a four-hour interview with Sigur Ros, or hanging out with some Icelandic bands that no one knows out here, but are really fascinating," Cameron continues. "It was kind of an internship in music."

As a songwriter, Cameron has the voice of a storyteller; his songs are literate, but not in the way people mean when they say a band like the Decemberists is literate. The Foghorns' songs are largely intricately detailed snapshots of stories or characters. Sometimes they're even just funny little anecdotes, as in "Brooklyn Bridge," wherein Cameron recounts an unfortunate time when he threw up on the bridge after running into a friend of a friend. Or there's "Old Bachelors in Cleveland," which resembles the work of short story writers like Raymond Carver in its intimate sketching of mood, setting and character.

"Truthfully, I don't know if I could submit a short story the way I write songs," says Cameron. "I'll maybe have ten pages of a story, and I'll distill it into a song."

The Foghorns' seventh release is entitled To the Stars on the Wings of a Pig, a reference to John Steinbeck's signature phrase. Cameron describes the album as simultaneously weirder and more accessible than the band's earlier efforts. Change though they might, the Foghorns still sound quintessentially like themselves - sleep-deprived and singing to get their second wind.

The Foghorns

With guests
Friday, Dec. 2, 7 p.m., cover TBA
The Den @ urbanXchange, 1932 Pacific Ave., Tacoma
253.722.9987