Sometime last year, I ran into Francine frontman Clayton Scoble in the audience at the Middle East, where he was nursing both a recently broken heart and a recently drawn pint of Sam Adams. " Wait till you hear the songs I’ve been writing, " he confided. " It’s going to be the ultimate romantic loser album. "

That’s not necessarily what you’d expect a songwriter like Scoble to come up with, given his love for intricate wordplay and subtly winding but ultimately catchy melodies. Both are present on Francine’s second album, 28 Plastic Blue Versions of Endings Without You (Q Division), but it’s also clear that Scoble has stuck with his original concept for the album — and largely redefined the sound of the band in the process. Whereas Francine’s 2000 Q Division debut, 40 on a Fall Day, was a lively guitar-driven affair, the new one sounds lonely and introverted, heavy on keyboards and loops; and instead of singing straight through the material, Scoble often essays an intimate, half-spoken delivery. And though his lyrics refuse to spell everything out, the mood and imagery of the disc reflect the circumstances under which it was made.

" I’d stop on the way home from work and buy a bottle of wine; then I’d sit up and write all night, " he recalls over a burger at Cambridge Common. And so he wound up writing the kind of song that he’d avoided in the past. If you go back through his catalogue, which includes a stint in Aimee Mann’s band (and a co-writing credit on her last album) as well as co-fronting Poundcake before launching Francine in 1998, you won’t find many love songs, happy or otherwise.

" I don’t think I ever cared much about break-up records before, even when I was listening to them, " he continues. " I was always too much of a curmudgeon about it — I thought it was megalomaniacal to write those kinds of songs, and I used to make fun of people who wrote them. But lately I’ve been listening to things like Beck’s new album [Sea Change] — yeah, it’s pedestrian and prosaic, but it’s so plainspoken that it just killed me. The problem is that most break-up albums have a common theme running through them: someone’s feeling angry because they’ve been used. I didn’t have that. I had something worse, which is coming out of a relationship feeling that the other person had no use for you at all. I was feeling like I’d pay money to have been used. "

Like the best break-up albums, 28 Plastic Blue Versions of Endings Without You makes its point as much through the music as through the lyrics. That’s largely because Scoble’s heartbreak didn’t completely alter his writing style. He prefers elliptical arrangements, in this case for self-protective reasons. " I don’t think I have the balls to really pull a page out of my diary and put it in a song. The details are in there, but I also cover my trail pretty well — that’s a leftover from my discovering how much fun it is to write really cubist, nonsensical lyrics. On this one I split the difference — a lot of it is pretty private, but people might figure out the references. "

One prime example would be " Novelty, " which focuses on finding two ice-cream pops left in the fridge. " They were real, " he interjects. " She brought them over the last time we were together. I didn’t have the heart to eat them, so I kept them there until someone finally took them away. "

The studio process for the new album also represented a change: Scoble, guitarist Albert Gualtieri, bassist Sean Connelly, and drummer Steve Scully were joined by producer and Jack Drag mastermind John Dragonetti, who’s credited with playing unnamed instruments. Given his history as an ace remixer/programmer and one-man band — and taking into account the disc’s heavy use of loops and keyboards — you might well assume that Dragonetti got heavily involved in reshaping the songs, bringing elements of the Jack Drag sound to the production. But both parties minimize Dragonetti’s influence on the album.

" I felt they already had it all down, " Dragonetti points out. " In the back of your mind, you don’t want to interfere, and it came more down to me being a moderator. " And it turns out that Scoble handled much of the looping and keyboard playing himself. " A lot of the loops and keyboard parts were flown in right from my demos, " he explains. " In part that was because I’m such a crappy keyboard player that I didn’t want to have to play the parts again. " Former Baby Ray bassist Paul Simonoff has since signed on as Francine’s full-time keyboardist.

Scoble’s fears that Francine’s fans wouldn’t buy the new sound were laid to rest when the band debuted the material on 28 Plastic Blue Versions of Endings Without You at their recent CD release show, a sold-out, sit-down affair at the Institute of Contemporary Art. They’ll play a more traditional gig at the Middle East next Saturday, April 5. In the meantime, Scoble is in search of inspiration for some more cheerful, more aggressive songs for the next Francine album. " I’m happy with the new album, and I’m looking forward to playing the songs live, but only for a finite period of time. It’s not excruciating to play them, but it is a little rough. And I’m sure the band feel that way as well. When they heard the material for the first time, they said, ‘That’s cool, we’re behind this. But we only want to do it for this one record, so you’d better get it out of your system.’  "

THREE WEEKENDS AGO, I was at T.T. the Bear’s Place watching John Doe doing an encore of the Beatles’ " Baby’s in Black. " Doe’s performance was improved by some audience participation going on behind me: the night’s opening act, Dave Aaronoff, was singing in the rear of the club with his bandmate Corin Ashley, the two of them filling in the three-part harmonies from the Beatles’ version, getting the lyrics as well as the music exactly right.

If there are any lingering doubts about Aaronoff’s mastery of classic pop, they should be dispelled by his latest release with his band the Details, The Devil’s in the Details (Topless). His second effort as a frontman, it comes off as the sort of album you’d expect from a prolific writer who had to take a back seat in his previous band, the Shods. Aaronoff still sounds like a songwriter cutting loose, working in a bunch of styles, alluding to the music he loves, most of which comes from the late ’60s. And the songwriting has a strong enough personality to make all the side trips, from the pure Mod bluster of " Alisa O’Neil " to the string-driven " Down the Drain " to the trippy, multi-layered " Between the Stones, " hold together. Along the way he fleshes out his usual guitar-band sound with strings, trumpet, and Al Kooper’s mighty Hammond organ.

" I’m a melody guy, " the singer/guitarist explains over a beer at the Middle East. " It’s tough, because I grew up listening to ’60s music, and you rediscover things and get further into certain bands. But I don’t know how popular that is with the young people these days, so it’s a bit of a dangerous thing. "

Either way, Aaronoff fits in comfortably with a number of other like-minded locals, notably Brett Rosenberg and the Pills, who update their favorite ’60s sounds for contemporary audiences. Indeed, the Pills and Brett Rosenberg both have connections to Aaronoff’s band: Rosenberg was the Details’ original co-guitarist, and the Pills’ Corin Ashley now holds that slot in a line-up that also includes bassist Deb Klein, drummer Craig Tomas, and keyboardist Jay Buckley. Aaronoff has since returned the favor by joining the Pills.

Despite the diversity of the tunes on The Devil’s in the Details, Aaronoff admits that many of the songs share the same inspiration. " Even though I’m writing pop songs, I try not to say anything trite or predictable — but, that said, nearly every song I’ve written is about being pissed off at a girl. Melodies seem to come easy, so I have more trouble coming up with a lyric that’s worth pursuing. I’m not feeling that way anymore, but I still write a lot of pissed-off songs. It’s a great topic, but I’m looking for other things to express. "

The connection with Al Kooper developed after Aaronoff contributed to a benefit show that Kooper put on at Passim last year for the late bluesman Dave Van Ronk. And Aaronoff admits he turned some of the keyboards up loud in the mix because Kooper was playing them. " He doesn’t like the punk rock very much, but he was able to sit down and pick things out of the air, just like he did on ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’  " The link-up was part of Aaronoff’s drive to make his second Details album more diverse than the first one. " I was a little anxious to get the first album out, since I’d just come out of the Shods. We’re still pretty punk rock when we play live, but when we did the record, I realized I was getting sick of just guitar, bass and drums. " Aaronoff and the Details will play the Abbey Lounge next Saturday, April 5.