Warm Fuzzy

How many good Boston pop bands on major labels does it take to screw in a light bulb? The members of Fuzzy aren't sure; they just hope they're not the ones who get screwed. Let's face it: there's nothing remotely unusual about a local album of smart, catchy guitar pop -- even one as sparkling as Electric Juices (out March 12 on Tag/Atlantic). Fuzzy have come in on the tail end of a trend, and they apparently realize it. But the beauty of pop music is that it tends to regenerate itself every time someone does something heartfelt, and Electric Juices does enough to make Fuzzy the best local band working in the genre -- for this week, anyway.

Talking over beers at the Middle East, three-quarters of the band (ex-Lemonheads drummer Dave Ryan is based in New York) reveal they're kicking around the usual hopes and dreams that go with the national release of a new album. And it mostly comes down to one dream.

"I'd love it if I could finally quit my day job," sighs singer/guitarist Chris Toppin, who's already lost one job because of the band. She and co-singer/guitarist Hilken Mancini met each other working at Tower Records, which fired them both last year because they missed too many work days on tour. True, there's a video budget and a label behind them, but Fuzzy are still smarting from their most recent gig -- a Coolidge Corner benefit played to a near-empty Hard Rock Café a few days earlier.

"You know how long I've been doing this, and it would be nice to worry about money a little less," says Toppin, who at 34 is the senior member. "We'd also love it if we didn't have to make our drummer sleep on a couch in a garbage dump," notes bassist Winston Braman. (Yes, Ryan spent the night outdoors when Fuzzy crashed with a friend in Austin, just a few weeks after the luxurious Lemonheads It's a Shame About Ray tour.) Such are the things that realistic rock dreams are made of.

Most of Fuzzy's members were familiar faces around town before they formed this band. Toppin played bass in the Ex-Girlfriends, former home of Herald writer/Velveteen member Robin Vaughan and Phoenix Events Editor Matt Ashare. Fuzzy initially did a run of sloppy, enthused gigs opening for better-known friends (notably a string of Dinosaur Jr. dates that they're still embarrassed about). Then they turned into a good band when nobody was looking. Released in late '94, their debut, Fuzzy, was the sort of thing you'd mentally file under "friendly, unassuming guitar pop" and then move on. Later you'd realize that the tunes were still sticking in your brain. There was a modesty about their sound -- the conversational lyrics, unfussy arrangements, and hooks that didn't immediately knock you over the head -- that belied how well-crafted it was.

If the style hasn't changed much, Electric Juices is still a different story. Although it's a few months early, it's the first quintessential summer album of 1996. The key word here is "polish": the songwriting's been streamlined, focused, and seriously hookified -- these tunes are as grabbing after one listen as the last album was after six. And the two frontwomen's harmonies, which weren't used as extensively on the first album, have turned into a band trademark. In fact there are hardly any solo vocals here. The guitars are rough-edged enough to make it sound current, but there's a good-vibrations feel about the music that goes back to the summer of '66, and it's no small feat to capture that mood in non-retro '90s songwriting.

Of course, you wouldn't know that from the song you've been hearing on the radio. "Girl Don't Tell Me" may be a tailor-made single, but Fuzzy didn't write it; Brian Wilson did in 1965. (Toppin sings it without changing gender, less as a provocative gesture than out of respect for the song. "`Guy Don't Tell Me' just doesn't work," she says. The teenage "back to school" references were also left intact.) They've been playing it live for a while and weren't pressured by Tag to record it, but then the label wasted no time picking this cover tune as the album's first single and video. (By coincidence the Smithereens' recent Attack of the Smithereens also has a version of the tune.) Thus they're already being groomed for greater success than with their debut (which was on Seed, another Atlantic-distributed label, sans video), but at a certain cost of creative control.

"I don't think it's that offensive. It's not `Mrs. Robinson,' " says Braman, referring to the cover hit that broke the Lemonheads. "We did the song in one take. We thought, `We don't have a problem recording this, as long as it's not the single.' "

"I take it more personally myself," says Mancini. "I thought it wasn't going on the album; now it's the single. That's lame and I hate it. What we heard from the label was, `You don't have to go for `Girl Don't Tell Me' -- but if you do, we'll spend all this money on it, remixing it and making a video.' And they wouldn't let it sink, like they did with the first album."

"I understand how you feel, but it doesn't bother me as much," Toppin repeats. "The fact is that he's a better songwriter than me; he's Brian Wilson. They [Tag] think this album is really good, but they're a little frightened about starting with an original song. If we start with `Girl Don't Tell Me,' we can have our own songs on the next single and the one after that. But I can see why people would think it's a big deal; there's less indie cred this way."

"We're already hearing about how we sold out," says Braman. "Right -- like we had so much to sell out from, when we were a band that couldn't play."

Another skirmish came up when they picked the cover design: a photo of a coiling snake lifted from a '60s issue of National Geographic. (Asked whether the image really fits their music, Mancini says, "Yes, because it's a happy snake.") They liked it even more when they found out that the same photographer had done Alice Cooper's Killer -- but it took a major effort to keep Tag from axing the idea. "I heard someone in the radio department say that there should be a fuzzy pink ball on the cover," says a visibly horrified Toppin.

"What gets me is that they thought it wasn't representative of the band," says Mancini. "And really, how can it not represent us if we all liked it?"

The least complicated thing in Fuzzy's life could well be their music. "Girl Don't Tell Me" may lead you in, but it's the originals that keep you coming back -- notably "Throw Me a Bone" and "Sleeper," which have more than a little lyrical bite behind the sunny exterior (the latter tune was inspired by an overzealous fan who stalked certain other female artists who work at Fort Apache). Electric Juices is just what you might expect from a happy snake: sweet stuff with a venomous aftertaste.

COMING UP

Ex-Nymphs member Inger Lorre will forever be known as the woman who peed on a Geffen executive's desk. But the Nymphs were a fine little punk outfit, and her new band Blacksheepheaven play T.T.'s on Saturday on a strong bill with Grind and Chelsea on Fire. Meanwhile, Swank, Lumen, and Velveteen are all at the Causeway, the Heavy Metal Horns are at Harpers Ferry, Sleepyhead and Edsel are at the Middle East, and Barrence rejoins the Savages at the Attic in Newton . . . Cult hero and former E Streeter Nils Lofgren plays Mama Kin on Sunday . . . And ex-Remain-gone-country-folker Barry Tashian performs with his wife, Holly, at Johnny D's Tuesday.