The call-up

Red Telephone's major-label moves

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

Look at most of the major-label albums that have come from the Boston underground and you'll see they sound like, well, albums from the Boston underground. The folks at Fort Apache and Q Division set the pattern by crafting an organic live sound that keeps a foot in the big leagues and a foot in Central Square. And though you could easily accuse a CD like Guster's Goldfly (Sire) of being calculated fluff, at least it represents Guster's own, personally calculated fluff. Because if you're a local band getting signed to a major label, there's an unspoken rule that your album isn't supposed to sound like a big-time, market-tooled production.

Although they swear it wasn't one, Red Telephone (out next week on Warner Bros.) sounds like such a production. Overseen by Dennis Herring, who previously got the most conventional-sounding efforts out of Throwing Muses and Camper Van Beethoven, and mixed by the expensive Chris Lord-Alge, the album sounds so massive that it's hard to believe the Red Telephone ever played T.T. the Bear's Place (which will be the site of their CD-release show on the 25th). And though you want to praise them for their ambition, this may just be a case where a band's strengths don't translate to the larger setting. Those strengths are a tight ensemble and a knack for well-crafted songs that cross modern pop with '60s psychedelia. The band's name, the title of a fabled song that Arthur Lee wrote for Love, is a definite lure to the psychedelic crowd. But it's a thin line between loud pop and generic alternative, and too much of this album jumps right over. With a wah-wah quotient that exceeds the legal limit, the heavy guitar sound comes out datedly grungy, and the occasional in-jokes are far too obvious -- Henry Mancini surf/spy licks on a rocker? Back-up harmonies alluding to Pet Sounds? An arena rock homage that quotes Led Zeppelin? At this point it's hard to name an outfit that hasn't already done those. With Matt Hutton singing in low-growling tones throughout, the most psychedelic thing the Red Telephone evoke is the Psychedelic Furs.

The '60s tie-ins are mostly lyrical, and that's another problem. Psychedelic imagery usually works best when it's accompanied by a disquieting undertone. Otherwise the results tend to sound self-consciously quirky. That's why Robyn Hitchcock stopped writing lyrics like "Under the water, where do you go/I'm not an amphibian, I wouldn't know" (from the Red Telephone's "Piranha"). That's also the difference between, say, Syd Barrett's "Baby Lemonade" and the Red Telephone's "The Cinnamon Life," which uses the name of a cereal as a symbol for the good life -- which is clever, but not clever enough to build a five-minute song on. The vocal has a self-satisfied tone that makes emotional connection that much harder.

Still, the band's sincerity is more than apparent when I get Hutton on the phone. "I have to say that there's a lot of suspicion in Boston about integrity," he volunteers, calling from a tour drive in New York State. "Especially with a band like us. We were new and we got signed before we proved ourselves. But really, Warners just liked our tape. It was just good timing and persistence. There was a time people thought we were a novelty band because we pushed the power-pop thing so hard, and we were into really loud clothes. But that was just one stage of the band. Right now I'm trying to forge some union between Led Zeppelin and Sonic Youth, combining power pop with that avant guitar thing."

The band's major-label experience hasn't been as easy as one might imagine. Signed more than a year ago, they lost time and money on a false start with a producer they won't name. "We got in way over our heads, recording everything that came to mind -- Mellotrons, Hammond organs, overdubbing like crazy. It sounded like garbage, and we threw out the whole thing. What's ironic is that right before we started, I interviewed the Gigolo Aunts for the Noise, and they told me the whole story [about their scrapped RCA album from 1995]. And then the same thing happened to us. When we got Dennis Herring, we didn't have much money and we had to make it fast. It was our managers' idea [ex-Nirvana managers Tim Anctil and John Silva] to have someone remix it. But all Lord-Alge really did was to make it sound more cohesive."

It's also hard to knock a band's integrity when they've turned down easy soundtrack money twice. Last year the Red Telephone were offered a slot on the Batman Forever soundtrack -- a windfall for a band who hadn't released anything yet -- but decided it was too cheesy. And they felt the same about a slot they were recently offered on a horror-film soundtrack. "They wanted us to do a really sinister version of `Hello Dolly' for Chucky IV. We did it and then said no, that wasn't us. The Batman thing came from a guy who did AOR for us -- he wanted to use `Piranha' on the soundtrack. But we thought it would make us look too much like a novelty -- people would end up associating our name with the red telephone that Batman used."

LOUD FAMILY

The road to pop heaven leads to T.T. the Bear's Place this Friday (July 17) when San Francisco's Loud Family make one their infrequent local appearances. Fronted by singer/guitarist and former Bostonian Scott Miller, the Louds do songs that are exhilarating on the surface but rich with subtext. And just because the band are deep thinkers doesn't mean that they can't be endearingly goofy on stage.

That much has been known since Miller's early days with Game Theory, but the fourth Louds album, Days for Days (Alias), is a bit different. To these ears it's the first willfully uplifting album he's made, after accidentally uplifting ones like 1995's break-up-inspired Interbabe Concern. If the previous albums were about finding beauty in disorder, this one's more about finding disorder in beauty. The happiest-sounding hook winds up in a song called "Dee-Pression"; the opening "Cortex the Killer" finds equal room for middle-aged regrets, dogged optimism, and the Neil Young pun.

Reached by phone, Miller sheds some light on his current songwriting process. "At some core level it's about being understanding rather than simply accusatory. Maybe that's as positive as you can get. Instead of pronouncing judgment on people who behave badly, I can now understand why they behave that way, and maybe show how it feels when they do."

Miller's cult-hero status clearly hasn't affected his self-effacing streak -- and neither has it made the songwriting process any less mysterious. "I still feel hopeless at the beginning of every album, not knowing where the songs are going to come from. It's not as though my abilities get ratcheted up with each record. To me songwriting is still something out of the air. I don't believe there's a spiritual component to it, just that the brain works of its own accord. But the melody lines at the heart of the whole thing -- the way you feel something that touches the heart a certain way -- to me that's absolutely uncontrollable. If something I write turns out pretty or catchy, I don't mess with it. To me those are the goods. But shaking people up can be a good thing as well. You certainly don't want to be pretty and jangly and poppy nonstop. You have to be a master of light and shade on some level."

MARLENE AT LIZARD

If you walked into a club and saw a juggler on stage, a cabaret combo tuning up, and a Marlene Dietrich look-alike circulating among the crowd, you'd have to assume that either Rick Berlin or Cynthia von Buhler must have something to do with it. And you'd be right. The Lizard Lounge's weekly event known as "Marlene Loses It" is the brainchild of Berlin, the local-music figure who's lately been doing his nights of decadent fun at Jacque's. The Marlene figure is Pam Tapia, who raises hell and eyebrows in von Buhler's Women of Sodom. A nice antidote to the quiet that prevails between Harvard and Porter Squares on weeknights, the shows combine cabaret/cocktail ambiance with something grittier. On the night I visited, Slide were doing their funk-infused rock and Caged Heat were cranking up guitar and harmonica for punkified blues. The Marlene nights continue this week with music by Love Whip and Big Gladys, plus a dramatization by Ronnie Sullivan of Joan Crawford doing daughter Christina's hair.

COMING UP

Tonight (Thursday) it's swing time at Bill's Bar with Dem Brooklyn Bums and the ubiquitous Brother Cleve. Folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliott is at Johnny D's, 16 Deluxe and Pistola are upstairs at the Middle East, and Marcia Ball does a Boston Harbor cruise . . . Tomorrow, the Jesus and Mary Chain play Karma Club, Brother Cane hit the Paradise, ex-Lemonhead Nic Dalton joins I Am Japan and the Pageboys at the Zeitgeist Gallery, Don Walser yodels at Johnny D's, Ronnie Earl is at the House of Blues, and the Four Freshmen come to Ryles . . . On Saturday it's Scrawl and Wheat upstairs at the Middle East, Chris Whitley at Mama Kin, Geno Delafose at Johnny D's, Bobby Parker at the House of Blues, and Groovasaurus and Jules Verdone at T.T.'s . . . Sunday brings the Rock*A*Teens to the Middle East . . . The Pernice Brothers are free at Green Street on Monday . . . Athens roots dude Jack Logan plays the Middle East on Tuesday; alterna-country favorites BR5-49 play Mama Kin's Music Hall . . . And on Wednesday Nashville Pussy are back in town at Axis.