Fresh sounds

Back in the real world, the band spent close to five months touring the US after Chicago's Minty Fresh (original home of Veruca Salt) pressed a promising four-song EP; they got singled out by SPIN magazine for releasing one of the "10 Best Albums you didn't hear in '95" and remained practically unknown in and around their hometown. As Goddess puts it from a tour stop in Dallas, "It took a really long time for us to get gigs in Boston, but we started touring right away. On our first tour, which was two springs ago, we played Cicero's in St. Louis with [former Replacements guitarist] Slim Dunlop, who drew a pretty big crowd. There were these Letters to Cleo posters up on the wall, so I mentioned something about them to the club owner, who told me that they'd just played and that only two people showed up. When we got back to Boston, there was a big article in the Phoenix about Letters to Cleo at South by Southwest and how they were poised to make it big." (Papas Fritas play a rare local gig at T.T. the Bear's on January 4.)

Papas Fritas have followed a more idiosyncratic, self-contained path to modest national exposure that hasn't relied much on local support. Formed back in 1993 by Tufts graduates Goddess and Keith Gendel (bass/backing vocals), Papas Fritas settled on their current line-up when Tufts bio/psych major Shivika Asthana, a high-school pal of Goddess's from Delaware, was given her first drum set. While Asthana practiced keeping a beat, Goddess mastered the art of lo-fi recording in his own Hi-Tech City four- and eight-track studio. The trio's first single, released by Sunday Driver Records in February of '94, was rough, tuneful, and quirky enough to fit in nicely with the emerging lo-fi underground.

There are traces of the group's humble origins on the Papas Fritas EP. The disc's second track, "Means," takes understated Velvet Underground-style drone pop into what sounds like a bathroom where the water's been left running -- a rudimentary beat and a lazy-strummed guitar obscure a mumbled verse until a wave of feedback washes over the entire mix. But the trio's sophisticated pop personality surfaces on "Passion Play," the EP's lead track: a flourish of bright acoustic guitar and pretty vocal harmonies gives way to a simple, buoyant, '60s-style groove, which then opens up into a Beatle-esque chorus replete with "I Am the Walrus" string accompaniment.

The full-length Papas Fritas, which was recorded on the Hi-Tech City eight-track and then mixed by Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade at Fort Apache, fades into focus with "Guys Don't Lie," a winsome ode to romance that shimmers with Partridge Family hooks, Jonathan Richman innocence, and lovely vocal arrangements. Asthana's artless volleys of "na na na" come as the coy answer to Goddess's shy "Baby, we'll try something new," and then Gendel joins in for an exuberant chorus of "Girls and boys should be as one."

"I really like the arranging part of writing and recording the most," explains Goddess. "That's why I'm a big Brian Wilson and Lindsay Buckingham fan. And that's also why we use our own studio: if you tell an engineer at a [commercial] studio that you want a guitar that sounds like tin foil, then he's not going to know what the hell you're talking about. But if you've got the time, then you can figure that stuff out for yourself. When we realized you could write and record your own record at home, it was so liberating."

On Papas Fritasthe trio bounce from the Monkees-style "bop badabadop" snap of "Holiday" to the cowbell-accented Cars-like drive of "Wild Life," from the melancholy swing of "TV Movies" to the wry longing of "My Own Girlfriend," where strings, piano, and Goddess's brittle falsetto take the place of bass and guitar. And what at first sound like simple pop songs with a familiar reference point (new-wave quirks retooled with indie irony) open up to reveal complex arrangements that recall the experimental-pop heyday of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. It's the inspiring sound of a band who've been freed by pop, liberated by a lo-fi recording studio, and plucked out of nowhere by an independent label.