Park life

Myke Weiskopf's scientific pop

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

Spend enough time interviewing Science Park mastermind Myke Weiskopf and you realize he's probably spent half his life preparing to play "Meet the Press." Weiskopf didn't just dream of making records as a teenager -- he started making them when he was 10. That was 12 years ago, and though he's only recently put out his first proper album -- Futurama, on Obscure-Disc -- he's got the assurance of an industry pro.

"I used to write for 'zines myself, so I'm used to this process," he explains over coffee at Cambridge's Someday Café, where he's ducking a BU film class to talk to me. "But sure, I certainly reflect often in terms of where I'm coming from."

That would be the Chicago suburbs, where he became pop-obsessed at a young age. "I did a lot of Archies covers. When I was 10 I commandeered the studio and got an engineer to play all the instruments -- can't say I was that proud of it. My lyrics were dreadful for about eight years. And I did my 13-year-old attempts at sophisticated New York City dadaist pop. In suburban Illinois, this didn't come off as well as it should have."

From such humble beginnings sprang Futurama -- officially a band effort, though it's Weiskopf doing most everything. He has a full band for live shows, the next of which is this coming Thursday, April 15, at the Linwood Grille. Although he incorporates home-studio experiments and trip-hop influences, the CD is above all a set of achingly melodic, classic-model pop songs. It's also the soundtrack of Weiskopf's first couple of years in Boston. He came here for school, reached legal drinking age, hit the clubs, and got his heart broken a few times. No surprise that a lot of the best tunes were written and recorded in the wee hours of the morning.

"That's the good thing about working with electronic instruments," he points out, "because you never know when you're going to write a brilliant pop song. Early on I was not a very social person -- I came to work on synthesizers by dint of the fact that it was easier than teaching other people to perform my songs. But I always had that pure, unfiltered addiction to the sugary pop chorus."

Before leaving Illinois, he'd built up a large catalogue of material, which he'd distributed to locals on cassette. And there was a limited-edition demo CD. "It's funny, but a lot of my songs back then mentioned Boston. It was a place I'd write about from a distance, like someone writing about Papua New Guinea."

Say what?

"Well, the Future Sound of London had a song called `Papua New Guinea.' But it was just the East Coast sensibility, as I perceived it from the Midwest. Though I can't say I found the intellectual life I was looking for at BU."

Weiskopf's sexuality has everything and nothing to do with his songwriting -- you won't find a lot of female pronouns in his songs, and he did play his first local show at the Boston Gay Pride rally two years ago. But the themes he favors -- notably those old Elvis Costello standbys, revenge and guilt -- are as universal as they come. "I do get asked why I don't write more from a gay standpoint, but what's that supposed to mean? It would imply that gay emotions are somehow different. Anyone can relate to being vengeful and angry, however the sexuality may slant it. A lot of the songs came from the vantage point of being out in clubland four nights a week and encountering people at Man Ray and Quest."

Judging from "Boredom & Beauty" and "Under His Command," we can assume it wasn't always the greatest time. "I had my fun, sure. But songwriting comes from emotional extremes. I hate to be all Kurt Cobain about it, but I don't write when I'm happy. Maybe I'm just too much of a coward to approach someone directly."

He also includes a Stephin Merritt cover ("Lonely Highway"), just in case, as an archly romantic and openly gay songwriter doing new-wave-rooted synthesizer pop, he wasn't going to get enough Stephin Merritt comparisons already. "It's true, I shot myself in the foot with that one. My reasoning at the time was that it's a cover people won't be familiar with, but I think it's going to mysteriously disappear on subsequent pressings. I feel a certain amount of kinship with Stephin, but he was hardly an influence. In fact I hadn't heard him until quite recently. I got the Magnetic Fields album Get Lost, and it wasn't even miserable enough for me."

Still, Weiskopf says he's over his miserable period. "Post-Alanis Morissette, there isn't much left to say about anger and revenge that interests me. And I've been in a relationship for six months, so I've got my domestic life in the Back Bay. Give me the boyfriend and the cat and I've got all I need."

SNARES & KITES

One of the smartest things Matthew Sweet ever did was hooking up with ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd, a firebrand who had no overt respect for the kind of straight-ahead pop songs Sweet was writing. But the creative tension wound up working: Sweet had a permanent fire under his seat, Lloyd had good material to mess with, and the songs got a hint of menace they wouldn't have had otherwise. Something similar happened (at least on stage) when local guitarist Rich Gilbert teamed up with Tanya Donelly, giving her a clean break from the ethereal guitar sound she'd had in Belly.

Tricks of Trapping, the debut album by the ad-hoc band Snakes & Kites, is that kind of collaboration -- emotional singer/songwriter meets loose-cannon guitarist. In this case the former is Mitchell Rasor, a Syracuse transplant who led the dream-pop band Absolute Grey before doing some underrated solo albums. And the latter is Chris Brokaw, well known in these parts as Come's guitarist (and now on tour with Steve Wynn). The surprise is that the album is more upbeat, maybe even more commercial, than most of what Brokaw and Rasor have done separately. Sure, there are traces of the brooding tunes Rasor tends to write and the swamp dirt that Brokaw dishes out in Come. Mostly, however, they make like a garage band and play it quick and catchy -- on "F-150" they get surprisingly close to the Sweet/Lloyd sound. The guitar lead on "Bachelor Machine" -- all pretty jangles and Pete Buck arpeggios -- may be the least characteristic thing that Brokaw has ever played.

Although the two hadn't recorded together before, the project really dates back to mid-'80s college radio, when Brokaw and Rasor were DJs at the Oberlin College station. "We hung out together some," Rasor recalls. "I already had Absolute Grey, and Chris was known as the guitar god on campus."

Rasor's college-rock roots were on his mind when he wrote the material for the new album. "It's just some old guys having fun. I was thinking of the bands I loved in my youth -- Mission of Burma, Gang of Four. And the early Cars, those amazing blues riffs with new-wave keyboards, everything played really fast. That doesn't sound dated to me now, it just sounds good."

By the time he and Brokaw got to recording, they knew each other well enough to begin the sessions while one of them was in the bathroom. "That's how informal it was. That last instrumental on the album ["Night Window"] was written and recorded in 10 minutes. Chris came out of the bathroom, picked up a guitar, and added this amazing part to it. We recorded it in a weekend, and I think it's going to be more attractive to people than a lot of my own stuff -- it's more fun, which is what we were after. Chris says that people have been needling him for years to make a pop record, and he feels like this is it."

So far Tricks of Trapping has been released only on a small Dutch label (local stores are carrying the import), but they're looking to get it licensed here and make it an ongoing project. In fact, Brokaw's been talking up the record while on a European tour with Steve Wynn. "He was even at Sundance Film Festival recently, and he gave a copy to Michael Stipe," Rasor says. "Michael said he dug the cover, so that's a good start."

ROOTS AT T.T.'S.

One of the odd pitfalls of the local scene is that roots rock doesn't tend to fly in alterna-rock clubs. In fact, the only ill-attended NRBQ show I've ever seen was the one at the Middle East a few years back. T.T. the Bear's Place is fighting the jinx with a new "roots of rock" series, which debuted last Thursday with Barrence Whitfield and the Chicago band Chamber Strings. True, the line-up wasn't strictly rootsy: co-headliners Chamber Strings did classic power pop with a more modern (i.e., depressed) sensibility. Their songs were dressed up with shimmery guitar lines and harmonies that didn't necessarily resolve into choruses. So it's fitting that frontman Kevin Junior looks like a cross between Nikki Sudden and Eric Carmen. And Barrence was Barrence -- not just one of the best R&B shouters Boston has produced, but a genuine soul man who can inject passion into the most hedonistic party song. True to local pattern, he played for a much smaller crowd than the ones he draws at R&B-based clubs like Johnny D's or Harpers Ferry, but all three dozen fans had a blast. The series continues this week, in a more alterna-rock vein with Wide Iris.

COMING UP

The Zappa-esque Godboy play the Middle East tonight (Thursday) with popsters Karen Harris & Edith. New Orleans jammers the Radiators are at Harpers Ferry, the Ghost of Tony Gold are at the Milky Way, guitarist Chris Duarte is at the House of Blues, and Butterscott and Kipper Tin are at Club Bohemia . . . A wild and flashy bill at the Middle East tomorrow (Friday) with the Strangemen, Four Piece Suit, Silverstar, and the Sugar Twins. Meanwhile the Upper Crust are at the Milky Way, Meaghan Toohey is at the Lansdowne Street Music Hall, the Sheila Divine and former Blake Baby John Strohm are at T.T.'s, Expanding Man and the Sterlings are at Bill's Bar, Debbie Davies is at the House of Blues, and Martin Sexton is at the Paradise.

The Twisted Rico folks take over the Linwood Saturday, with Kodachrome, Driveway, and Uncool Niece. Keyboard whiz Ron Levy is at Johnny D's, Michelle Willson is at the House of Blues, and Popgun are at T.T.'s . . . Alterna-country folks the Gilmans play the Kendall Café on Sunday . . . The strange supergroup Banyan, with bassist Rob Wasserman and former Jane's Addiction member Stephen Perkins, are at Johnny D's on Monday . . . UK rock sensations Gomez are at the Middle East on Tuesday . . . And the Willard Grant Conspiracy continue their April residency at the Lizard Lounge Wednesday, with Wooden Leg and the Tarbox Ramblers.