Sweet deal

Velvet Crush escape to LA

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

Somewhere in Los Angeles, namely Matthew Sweet's home studio in Laurel Canyon, the Providence-based band Velvet Crush are working on their fourth album. This may be news to local fans who gave them up for dead last year. It may be news to the major label (Epic/Sony) that rejected the last Crush album, Heavy Changes (just released on the band's own Action Musik label). It may even be news to a couple of guys who used to be in the band. But one of New England's finest pop outfits is surviving, so all's well with some part of the world.

Not that Velvet Crush are necessarily still a New England band, or even a band at all: the current line-up boils down to singer/bassist Paul Chastain and drummer Ric Menck, who spent the past year touring with Matthew Sweet. On the album in progress, the duo and the producer are playing most of the instruments, with Sweet and Chastain overdubbing guitars and keyboards. Sweet's connection goes back to pre-Girlfriend days, when he produced the first Crush album, In the Presence of Greatness, and was briefly a touring member of the band.

"We really did break up in a way," Chastain reports from LA. "The band was broke at the time we stopped, then Ric and I went on the road with Matthew and we made pretty good money. On the road we talked to a few people who were fans of the band -- we got a little recognition, so we wanted to keep it going. But we won't be a three- or four-headed monster like we were before. There'll be a band when there needs to be a band."

Meanwhile people outside Japan (where it was released last year) can finally hear Heavy Changes, which was supposed to have come out in mid 1996. A worthy follow-up to 1994's superb Teenage Symphonies to God, Heavy Changes sounds a little more desperate and a lot more electric: this time the band's pop optimism is undercut by anger instead of melancholia. Producer Mitch Easter makes the guitars good and snarly, and his studio know-how makes the album sound live and immediate, even though it was a bit of a Frankenstein production: Chastain points out that "Used To Believe" is edited together from two versions, recorded before and after former Six Finger Satellite member Peter Phillips joined on guitar. Phillips plays lead on the first half of the tune, but the outro is an Easter-led guitar jam recorded a year earlier.

Both Epic and the band's English label, Creation, apparently rejected Heavy Changes for lack of a single, but it's hard to tell what they were thinking: the opening "Play for Keeps" is as hit-singlish as they come, and "Fear of Flying" and "God Speed" (an uncharacteristic step into mid-Stones/Black Crowes territory) would be good follow-ups. That's not to deny that the album's a little challenging, especially if you're used to the warm and fuzzy, '60s-revival school of pop (the Sloan/Push Kings approach). Heavy Changes' thick guitar sound, its emotional ambiguity (at least three songs about friendships gone sour), and occasional weird arrangement (sticking a Manchester-type drum lick on the Buck Owens death song "Red Satin Bed") all ensure that things don't get that reassuring. Rather, they prove that a well-turned pop hook can be a celebration and catharsis at once.

"The album catalogues that time in the band's history, which were the final chapters," Chastain says. "We were happy at times and screwed up at times, and I can hear that when I listen to it. Being on the road forever, bringing it back home and feeling the disillusionment afterward -- all of that plays into it. I think it has a definite sound, a lot of heart and soul. But it came up against a lot of opposition from people who heard bits of it, which irritated me because I liked it so much."

The next album is likely to be kinder and gentler. "It's definitely a lighter record," Chastain reports, "real poppy-sounding -- more like friends getting together and playing. We've done a couple of acoustic songs and a country song, a couple of epic ballads. We're trying to be more judicious with the parts, thinking, 'Do we really need more guitars on this song?' But it's not been super-deliberated over; we've just done seven songs in 10 days. We start most songs with Ric playing drums and me doing guitar, then someone plays bass and we build on the groundwork. Matthew's mostly being the recordist, but if something needs playing he'll step in and do it."

The only problem with Velvet Crush's regrouping in LA is that the other two members, Phillips and original guitarist Jeffrey Borchardt, have been effectively cut out of the band. Stranger still, the old quartet are about to regroup for a Japanese tour, which will likely be the last time they play together. At the moment no hometown dates are scheduled. "Jeffrey was pretty okay with the changes," Chastain says. "He knew it was going to happen and he's moved on to a different phase of his life. With Peter it was a little weirder, because he'd just joined the band and didn't know about all the water under the bridge."

Menck and Chastain will also be on the next Matthew Sweet album, whenever he gets around to making it. "He's chomping at the bit to get started, but his record label changed hands and he's still finagling. But he's got the material; there must be a hundred demos for the new album already. He writes more songs in a week than I do all year."

NEW MIDDLE EAST

If you walked into the front room of the Middle East over the past week, the place may look unfamiliar yet strangely familiar: the room now has a new set of tables, booths, and stools and an entirely different bar. This allows for a more compact seating area with more open space, so waitresses no longer have to run an obstacle course on crowded nights. But if denizens of Central Square get a sense of déjà vu, there's good reason: the new furnishings came from the Bradford, a watering hole two doors down from the Middle East (on Mass Ave) that often served as a (usually) quieter retreat from the Middle East on crowded nights before it closed several years ago. "I've passed out on this bar many times," a patron noted at last week's Bevis Frond show.

ROCK SCHOOL SITE

Some of the best and funniest rock criticism I've read in years turns up in Rock School, a comic strip that Crispin Wood pens for the Noise. The monthly strip follows the misadventures of a hapless local outfit -- whose members look a lot like Wood's former group, the Bags -- as they deal with inglorious gigs, interband squabbles, bad beer, and other universals. Now Wood's launched an Internet site (www.rockschool.com), with a spiffier version of same. This time the characters are animated and in color, and there are interactive versions of the strip, complete with music. In fact, the three Bags -- Wood, Jon Hardy, and Jim Janota, alias Upper Crust's Jackie Kickassis -- provide the characters' voices and did new music for the site. A song by the trio as the semi-fictional band Dumpus All Encompass will be on a Curve of the Earth compilation later this year. A Rock School CD-ROM is also in the works.

TWO KIMBALLS

I normally wouldn't pay much attention to the news that Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn have recorded a new single together, but something in the press release caught my eye: one of the three songwriters of their collaborative single "If You See Him" was Jennifer Kimball. I figured congratulations would be in order to the Boston-based ex-Story vocalist, who's been stockpiling her own songs since she and singing partner Jonatha Brooke broke up. If Kimball went to Nashville and scored a lucrative deal, good for her. Turns out, however, that there are two Jennifer Kimballs, one based in Nashville and the other still living on Boston. And the two have become friends, thanks in part to the frequent confusion over their identities. "She's written a few hits in Nashville and we've crossed paths a few times. But that's another story, if you'll pardon the expression," the Boston one said last week. The ex-Story member will release her own solo album in August.

COMING UP

Tonight (Thursday) is tribute night upstairs at the Middle East, with the songs of Neil Diamond, Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson, and others performed by PermaFrost, Gigolo Aunt Steve Hurley, and a band redubbed Beach Boy Wonder for the occasion. Also tonight, Bad Religion are downstairs at the Middle East, alterna-rock godfather Mike Watt brings his punk opera to the Paradise, the Ape Hangers and (Nervous) Eaters rock out at Mama Kin, and T.T. the Bear's Place brings in TVs so you can watch the final episode of Seinfeld, then puts the Sterlings on stage afterward . . . The Rumble semifinals begin at the Middle East tomorrow (Friday), chanteuse Holly Cole and songwriter Chris Stills (Steve's son) are at the Paradise, the Dirty Three and Calexico (Giant Sand's rhythm section) are at T.T.'s, and guitar slinger Jimmy Thackery is at Johnny D's . . . Saturday it's Babaloo at T.T.'s, the Rumble semis continuing downstairs at the Middle East, Mung upstairs at the Middle East, Letters to Cleo at the Paradise, Dennis Brennan at the Lizard Lounge, and Down Low Connection at Mama Kin . . . On Sunday New Orleans's wild bohemians Royal Fingerbowl begin a Middle East residency . . . Monday brings the funky brass band the Dirty Dozen to the House of Blues . . . And Loudon Wainwright III hits Scullers on Wednesday.