Reaching out

"We're all tired of being broke," she reports from Knoxville, Tennessee, where she's already started her tour a few days before the album's release. (She'll be at Johnny D's next Saturday, June 22.) "I'm going to play the game to get some airplay, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm bummed out about that. We want to sell some records."

The new album is clearly more commercial than her solo debut, last year's Absolution. But in this case, more commercial also means better. Although the sound has changed a bit, Noonan Building & Wrecking (which is the name of her father's company but could also refer to the relationship issues in the songs) gets closer to the feel of Knots & Crosses, a band who sold more than respectably in this area despite the lack of a national following. K&C tended to represent the more creative end of adult rock. With barely a fast or loud song in their repertoire, they nonetheless maintained a simmering tension that kept the music somewhat edgy and elevated the prettiness that came naturally to them. Think of what happens when Richard Thompson performs a love ballad, as opposed to what happens when Sting does.

The simmer was largely missing on Absolution, where the band sounded so entranced by Noonan's singing that they stayed out of her way. But there's more of a give-and-take on the new album, and a willingness to juggle the folk/pop/country elements in more-inventive ways. For her part, Noonan does some surprisingly gutsy singing that's a good deal less ethereal than usual.

"That stems from the last year of Knots & Crosses [during which the band never made an album]," she says. "During that time I was screaming out everything, and there was no dynamic in anything we were doing. So when I did the first solo album I wanted to get away from that approach, and now that album sounds a little wimpy to me. On the new album, I'd say that 90 percent of my vocals are live, which is a new thing for me. The budget was small enough that we didn't have time to dick around with it."

To make the album more radio-friendly, she's kept the songs down to airplayable lengths and recut one of Knots & Crosses' best-known tunes, "Creatures of Habit" (in a version that shows off her capable lead guitarist, Kevin Barry). But the most accessible move is the first track, "Love You Till the End," which is being shopped to adult-rock radio with some success. Not only is it one of the catchier things she's written, with an uncharacteristic hook and chugging rhythm, it's one of her few love songs with absolutely no dark undertones.

"At one point the song gets so joyous about love that it's embarrassing," she says. "It's getting so the band makes fun of it. I have to tell my husband, `I don't love you that much, I just got carried away.' "

The album's other love song, "Comes in Waves," is even more surprising since its blissful (and clearly hetero) romantic lyric is credited to one Amy Ray -- until Noonan reveals that it's her poetry-writing friend Amy Ray, not the Indigo Girl of the same name. Also successful is her version of the Patsy Cline tune "Leavin' on Your Mind," which sounds to these ears like the most purely country performance she's done (though she says it has "enough of a Daniel Lanois twist to scare the country people off"). And she's branched out enough to write "Ballad of Brownfield," about a violent crime committed near her hometown of Portland, Maine. "My songwriting never gets too deep; I start with a melody and hope for the best. But I was proud of that one, because it's one of the first times I was able to tell a story. I played it in Portland and one of the TV guys was there who had covered the crime, and he thought it was really creepy."

Now that Noonan's building a national audience, she's the first to admit that things are getting a bit tougher at home. "To be honest, I was pretty disappointed in how the public abandoned me after Knots & Crosses split up. And I'm sure that Allan [Williams, ex-K&C bandmate] has the same problem. When I come down to Nashville there's three stations playing the album, but in New England it's `Oh yeah, Carol Noonan, whatever.' If people would check it out, they'd probably see that we have the same elements that they liked in Knots & Crosses."

She's also not sure she's gotten enough credit for her writing contributions to that band. "That sort of thing happens when someone goes solo, but I'm not sure people realize how much of that band I really did. I was never just a bimbo that sang."

"Did you hate the Pixies cover?" asks Low Road singer/guitarist Mike Brenner. He's referring to the fairly straightforward version of "Gigantic" -- that is, as straightforward as you can get from a band with a stand-up bass, violin, and no electric guitars -- that's on the Philadelphia-based outfit's second album, Fidelity (Caroline). And no, I don't hate it, but it's a safe bet that many of the band's usual fans are going to. Few divisions are more pronounced than that between hippie bands and alternative bands. On their new album, the Low Road -- who are doing a Monday-night residency at the Kendall Café through June -- have crossed the line.

When I first caught the band a couple of years ago, they seemed to fit comfortably into a Dave Matthews/Counting Crows groove with a bit of G. Love thrown in. Suffice to say they weren't exerting themselves. But the harder direction on Fidelity is a pleasant surprise. Although the Pixies are an obvious influence (and violinist Rosie McNamara has developed a flair for Kim Deal-ish harmonies), the band most often sound like the Dambuilders' bohemian cousins. Even a track like "Jealous Husbands," which starts off with Brenner doing a G. Love-like stoner rap, finds the band crashing in before long and Brenner's voice taking on some real mania. Although the Low Road are still using mainly acoustic instruments, what matters is less what instruments they play than how they play 'em.

"We've had some odd reactions," Brenner admits. "People who've seen us live lately tend to get this curious look on their faces. But we're into what we're doing. I still like playing stuff that's melodic and mellifluous, but lately we're getting into using atonal dissonance. When we recorded, we were holding up something like Pet Sounds as the kind of album we wanted to make, and we definitely didn't want a pure-sounding acoustic record. We had the upright bass going through a Marshall stack; the acoustic guitar, the violin, and the harp were all recorded through cool amps and sent back through the board."

So why not just plug in and get it over with?

"That could happen. But I personally like playing acoustic guitar better -- just something about how you can hold the acoustic against your stomach."

Although Brenner's lyrics tend toward Beat-poetry abstraction, the best tracks throw some focused anger into the mix. "Daddy Loves Me" could be about incest or just about a strong parental bond; the song -- which shows even more Pixies influence than the cover tune -- works because the implications are left hovering. And "Mean & Average" rails against youth-oriented marketing.

"I don't know what's worse: watching a commercial and realizing that you're part of the exact demographic it's being aimed at, or feeling you're totally outside of it," Brenner explains. "I was just reading Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, where he describes the time that TV became available to the masses. The shift from seeing people on the street playing stickball to the streets emptying out and you could see the blue light in each window. I don't think that's changed at all."

So one would assume that the Low Road have mixed feelings about doing a video? "I wouldn't be against it. But we're on an indie, so there's a limited amount of resources we have anyway. Ben Folds Five is on our label and that album just showed a kick, so maybe someone will want to feed the fire."

Still living in Philadelphia, the Low Road have made frequent Boston stops -- usually at Johnny D's or the Kendall, which they filled two Mondays ago -- in the past few years. And this month, in time-honored folkie tradition, they don't really live anywhere. All through June they're doing weekly residencies in four clubs in four different cities: the Kendall on Mondays; Ithaca, New York, on Tuesdays; Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Wednesdays, and CBGB's Gallery in New York on Thursdays -- plus whatever gigs they can squeeze in on weekends. How is this being accomplished?

"Lots of driving," says Brenner. "Sleeping in every city, just doing the motels and getting burned out. It's six hours from Cambridge to Ithaca, and the drive to New York is one that we know pretty well. The Jersey Turnpike is our backyard."

COMING UP

Still man enough to be a woman, Jayne County hits Mama Kin Saturday with kindred spirits Space Pussy and the Peecocks. Meanwhile, the Flying Nuns are at T.T.'s, Susan Tedeschi's at Johnny D's, and Chevy Heston and Jocobono headline the Rat . . . Roadsaw are at the Rat Sunday opening for Fu Manchu; Skavoovie & the Epitones play the Middle East; and Memphis madman Tav Falco is at Mama Kin . . . Prickly and Weeping in Fits & Starts are at Charlie's Tap Monday . . . Strong pop at Mama Kin Tuesday: Lida Husik (whose new CD is a surprising swing into techno) opens for the Dentists spinoff band Coax . . . Former Wall of Voodoo guy Stan Ridgway is at the Middle East Wednesday.