What's going on

"All for naught, wasn't it?" LaRoche now says with a cynical laugh. Suffice to say that nothing went on with What Goes On. Three weeks after its release, EMI bought Virgin and scuttled most of the Charisma roster. The Sighs' album sank without trace before the band got their walking papers. Formed more than a decade ago, the Northampton-based outfit are still near-unknown in Boston; their one Paradise gig to support the album was an ill-attended show on Election Day 1992. Their second album, Different, was released this week on the much smaller Big Deal label. Nowadays the band's main worries are whether there'll be enough funds to play a small handful of gigs, and whether a third album will ever be a possibility. But hey, it could be worse: at least they didn't turn into assholes.

The Sighs deserve better. You won't have any problems pegging their sound: it's flat-out power pop, and unlike the Boston and Providence bands who mine similar sounds (Velvet Crush, Gigolo Aunts, Jigsaws), the Sighs make no attempts whatsoever to disguise their '60s roots. One would correctly assume that LaRoche's life changed the first time he heard Magical Mystery Tour. ("I must have been six, I remember my brother bringing the album home and loving it while my sister said, `Ooh, this is weird!' ") And in terms of Beach Boys influence, the Sighs' last album included a song called "No, Caroline."

"I like some contemporary stuff, but we're definitely rooted in '64-'66," LaRoche says. "It's pretty ingrained by now." Anyone with a weakness for that kind of sound should feel right at home with Different. The hooks are good, LaRoche and guitarist Matt Cullen provide the necessary nice-and-nasty counterpoint. The retro qualities are unavoidable, as is the occasional naïveté in the lyrics (the title track is about -- shock, horror! -- resisting peer pressure to use drugs), and one suspects that the band hang onto both as badges of honor.

If anyone still needs proof that major labels aren't necessarily your friends, the Sighs apparently got a heavier dose than most. They weren't released from their contract directly after the label takeover, but they got assigned to a Virgin A&R staffer who never liked them in the first place. (Meanwhile they went on tour with another then-rising band, the Gin Blossoms, and LaRoche has a fond memory of running through an a cappella version of the Everly Brothers' "All I Have To Do Is Dream" with the Blossoms' Robin Wilson backstage.) On their own dime, they spent three months woodshedding after the first album sank, then went back to Virgin with a 17-song demo, only to be told that their A&R rep liked half of one song. " `Somebody To Shove' was hot at that time," LaRoche recalls, "and I swear to God, these were his very words: `You guys should sound more like Soul Asylum.' "

The band's response? "Deep depression, but we rallied," says LaRoche, who adds that his hopes aren't as high for the new release (most of the members have side projects; Cullen is now the second guitarist in Kevin Salem's band). "I can't say, `This is gonna do rah-rah-rah for us,' because that remains to be seen. It's just an opportunity for us to have our music heard."

The best song on Different is called, uh, "I'm No Virgin." Draw your own conclusions, but they're smart enough to make their record-label gripes at least slightly ambiguous -- the title could also mean "I've been around." It's the one time that the band break out of nice-guy pop mode, with a snarling wah-wah guitar and LaRoche's shout of "You can't keep me down, I've been holding out too long!" For those three minutes, at least, the Sighs get even.

NEW KUSTOMIZED

The first Kustomized album (The Battle for Space) could have passed for a Volcano Suns album; this one picks up some new influences (notably surf and Vegas striptease -- the album begins and ends with instrumentals) and takes a different approach. There's more ferocity in the punk numbers, which have a Wire-ish brevity and tone down Prescott's usual tongue-in-cheek approach. When he says he's "Bored to Death," he means just that. And the pop hooks that start appearing midway through the disc are as catchy as any Prescott's written, even if they come as a minor shock in this context.

"I've never been too traditional about music, but this is as traditional as I've gotten," Prescott explains. There's a lot of fast loud music out there, but not a lot of rock music. It's always a challenge to see if you can pull something new out of it." The album's bigger sound happened by accident, he says. "To me, the other albums were never low-tech enough -- I'd always be fighting technology to get a natural sound. I've always been plagued by bombast; it's a constant struggle not to keep everything going at the top of your lungs. Sometimes after the million records I've been involved with, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing."

Prescott's own tastes run to lounge music these days ("I know that's a trend but I don't care"), but Kustomized have also recorded "A Question of Degree" for a forthcoming Wire tribute album that features Lush, Mike Watt, and My Bloody Valentine. "I usually hate the idea of those tribute albums -- but not with Wire, they're my soft spot." Is Kustomized progressing along the lines he envisioned three years ago? "Not really, because I never had much of a vision. As long as this is fun, it's going to be satisfying."

REUNION RUMORS

More likely is a brace of reunions for the release of WMBR's Pipeline CD, which will be a joint Middle East/T.T. the Bear's Place bash on March 22-23. Along with a dream list of still-extant bands (Fuzzy, Upper Crust, Flying Nuns, Gigolo Aunts, Roger Miller, Dirt Merchants, Smackmelon), a few reunion sets are likely. The Bags are confirmed for their first show in five years, and WMBR's Bob Dubrow says that reunions of Big Dipper and Orangutang are also being discussed. Also likely to appear are the Zulus, who can't make it that weekend but may play another 'MBR event a few weeks later.

Another notable reunion takes place this Tuesday at Johnny D's: Push Push (whose frontman, Dennis Brennan, has been shaking some recent action as a solo) are getting back together to benefit drummer David Birmingham, who's now recovering from a car crash. Expect to hear the local classic "This Kind of Love" one more time.

COMING UP