Ever since Mission of Burma first graced Boston’s club stages, 20 years ago, and the Pixies followed, there’s been at least a handful of bands in town determined to set rock and roll to their own imaginative soundtrack. And to do it artfully — expanding the sonic boundaries of the music while applying their own thoughtful, heartfelt approach to songwriting in the hope of creating something original in a scene as plagued by recycling as our culture at large.

The Red Telephone’s new Cellar Songs proves they are such a band. Indeed, they have been since their inception little more than four years ago — though for a time they lost their vision. Because their sound, songs, and playing ability made them stand out, the Red Telephone were drafted into the WBCN Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble and signed to Warner Bros. within their first year. Trouble ensued.

After guitarists Matt Hutton and Sean Toohey, bassist Pat MacDonald, and drummer Mark Britton had already made good-sounding demos of a stack of tunes for their debut album, the guys were shipped out to LA and saddled with a producer Òwho wasn’t very talented at anything but smooth-talking us,Ó Hutton recounts when he, Toohey, and McDonald sit down with me at the Middle East. ÒWhen we were done recording, the A&R department said, ‘This doesn’t sound very good.’ And we realized they were right. We were so new at this, and so deep into the process in a big studio for the first time, we figured, ‘Well, this must be the way it’s supposed to be; I guess the mix will fix this.’ Ó

The Red Telephone used what was left of their major-label budget to make their debut album again. And they say they did a damn good job working with producer Dennis Herring in Oxford, Mississippi. Then the label gave the result to famous mixing engineer Chris Lord-Alge, who was so entrenched in the corporate rock-of-the-moment mentality that he shit all over their work. So 1998’s The Red Telephone sounds like a grunge record, or — as Toohey puts it — Òlike everything was recorded through a big Marshall.Ó Which couldn’t be farther from the truth.

ÒWe play people our own mixes of the same album and they think it’s a different recording of those songs,Ó Toohey observes. ÒThey can’t believe it’s the same versions.Ó

Making matters worse, Warner Bros. dissolved its artist-development operations right after signing the Red Telephone. So upon their debut’s release the band found themselves with an album that didn’t represent their melodic, broad-palette approach and a label that couldn’t help them grow.

After negotiating their way out of their Warners contract, the Red Telephone took five of the 25 demos they’d chalked up while waiting for their freedom and publicly announced that they’d reclaimed their vision with last year’s Aviation (Catapult) EP. It outsold their big-label release and helped win more fans.

Now Cellar Songs, on their own Raise Giant Frogs imprint, should do the same. Not just because it’s getting a radio and print publicity push from the Boston-based Planetary Group, but because it is exceptionally good music. From the blurt of the laser beam of sound — a bright, ringing result of a happy accident with effects pedals and an amplifier — that opens the album to the tremolo shivers of ÒBurned by the Sun,Ó the shifting four-note pattern that draws attention to the verses of ÒThe Possibility Shop,Ó and the twining leads and chords of ÒLast Day of MayÓ (which recall Television’s twin-Fender interplay), the guitars play all over this album like dolphins. Although their joy feeds off Hutton’s meticulously crafted and genuinely appealing vocal melodies, they’re tempered by a hesitancy and restraint that reflect the bittersweet underpinnings of the lyrics and the band’s wise minimalism. Cellar Songs is a kind of accidental concept album. Hutton explains that it wasn’t until they were sequencing the disc that they noticed what they’d recorded tells a story of innocents who leave their suburban safety and learn they must bear the weight of reality. Songs of innocence and of experience, as Blake once put it.

ÒI develop everything I play off the melodies,Ó offers bassist MacDonald. Speaking for himself and drummer Britton, Toohey seconds that. As, indeed, does songwriter Hutton. ÒThe way I write,Ó he explains, Òis I turn on the tape recorder and start singing melodies into it until I like something. I’ll figure out some chords and bring it into the band, and it’s not until it feels like the song’s going to survive that I’ll write lyrics. Until then, I’m singing gibberish.Ó

ÒAbsolutely everything serves the melody,Ó Toohey adds.

As far as what finally gets on disc or taken onto the stage, that’s the result of the band’s alchemy. Both guitarists have played together for 10 years in various bands, but it’s obvious during our discussion that the Red Telephone have a genuine rapport. All three band members wear broad smiles and exchange ideas with infectious dynamism; it’s clear that they truly enjoy one another’s company — and that they’re positive-minded and engaged enough by making music to put their Warner Bros. experience behind them.

ÒIt’s that classic American tale of the little guy who gets beaten down by the corporate giant,Ó Toohey remarks, Òthen comes back stronger.Ó

RECLAMATION of artistic vision was also the issue when David Wildman formed Fire in the Boathouse, the highly charged country-rock ensemble whose national debut of the same name comes out on Cambridge-based Accurate Records on February 27.

Wildman’s been playing rock since the ’80s — first in Western Massachusetts, where he hails from, and since the turn of the ’90s in a series of well-respected bands based in Boston whose reputation was built on his songwriting: Thinner, Savage Garden, Kasper Hauser, Slow Learner. But he’s always loved the songs of Neil Young, the Band, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen — the kind of great mythological carvings from the American Dream that it took Canadians to write. And in recent years that influence has crept increasingly into his compositions. Finally, last year, he broke up Slow Learner — his first attempt to honor his roots leanings — and turned his back on what he calls Òthe rock scene.Ó

ÒI kept writing songs that were swinging, in a way, and got sick of trying to get the band to go where I wanted to go,Ó he explains when he and veteran drummer Mick Aiello meet me for mid-afternoon margaritas. ÒI found myself not bringing certain songs I was writing to the band because bands have an inclination to want to rock. It’s fun to rock! But I wanted to connect with music that seems more real to me. So I gave myself permission to get out of the rock scene and decided that, even if it’s not cool, I’m going to play the kind of music I’ve been listening to.Ó

But the truth is that Fire in the Boathouse are cool, and they rock and swing. The band’s mongrel blues-country-rock approach at times rings the Pavlovian bell of Let It Bleed–era Rolling Stones, especially when Wildman’s unfettered saloon piano roars to the fore or drives the band the way Nicky Hopkins did for Mick and the guys in the ’70s. And though songs like ÒDifferent HatÓ sway to a honky-tonk two-four beat (expertly provided by Aiello on a kit stripped down to a snare and kick drum), they’re also decorated with pretty harmonic details often built around the interplay of Jerry O’Hare’s mandoguitar and layers of acoustic and electric picking and strumming.

Although Wildman considers Fire in the Boathouse a country conflagration, the best tag for their album may simply be Òdamn good music.Ó ÒYou Did Me InÓ has the muscular guitar and rhythmic heft of rock, as well as a killer chorus that’s right for intelligent pop radio — if such a thing still exists. And ÒBlack HelicopterÓ shimmers and creeps like the Fall. O’Hare’s lap steel and mandoguitar help unify the sound: the strong currents of his fat slide tone pour from song to song, and the bright sparkle of the mando is the perfect sweetener for all the mid-to-slow tempo’d numbers. The line-up is completed by guitarist Jim Bouchard and bassist Jim Rapoza. As a group they strike a balance between necessity and complexity, each member developing his own intertwining parts and leaving space for everything else — including Wildman’s lightly quavering vocals, which move easily from croon to keen to dark menace. As Aiello, who has played with the Radio Kings and a number of other traditional music outfits, points out, ÒThere’s such an intense rhythmic interplay going on in the band all the time that my set-up is perfect. All I really need to do is keep time.Ó ÒLike a clock — perfectly,Ó Wildman adds.

Of course, Wildman’s expressionist lyrics are another factor in Fire in the Boathouse’s favor. They’re often bizarre and personal, and they often deal with love collapsed. ÒThat wasn’t my intention,Ó Wildman asserts, though he concedes he’s not had terrific romantic success. ÒI wrote the songs spontaneously. Some of them go back years, but . . . well, sometimes I try to do this exercise where I just say whatever is exactly on my mind. I’ve tried to develop that, so when I’m writing a song I’m not consciously thinking about what’s coming out. I don’t want to question it, and I don’t try to go back and shape it into a story.Ó

The line-up itself formed from equally organic — yet tragic — circumstances. The musicians were already playing together as a group behind singer/songwriter Alexis Shepard, who died in a bicycle accident four days before she was to begin making her debut album. ÒWe stayed together as friends to help each other through that tough time,Ó says Aiello. And when Wildman saw them play at a memorial performance for Shepard, he knew he’d found his crew.

Otherwise he’d probably be working harder on his book. Wildman is a journalist who covers arts for the Boston Globe’s City Weekly section, but he’s also penning a novel called The Human Engine. ÒIt involves a cult in the Berkshires and gets into an alternative history of humanity, another explanation for religion, and humans as electromagnetic energy,Ó he explains. And it’s definitely not stream-of-consciousness, since he’s now five years into its writing.

DOWNLOAD SONGS BY THE RED TELEPHONE AT: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/BOST_MP3/featured_mp3s.html.