E-Mail This Article to a Friend Boston’s own British invasion The Anglophile angles of the Good North and the Information BY MIKE MILIARD

At their practice space in Brighton’s Sound Museum, four-fifths of the Good North have gathered over a couple of six-packs to talk about their new EP, Life Outside Our Walls (Primary Voltage), which they’ll be celebrating with a release party this Friday at T.T. the Bear’s Place. And as it happens, Primary Voltage founder Evan Koch (a/k/a "Coach") has just shown up with a box of newly minted CDs, and the band crowd around to get a first look. They’re all thrilled, but I confess my disappointment that it’s not more of a Smell the Glove–type moment.

"Oh, we’ll have plenty of Spinal Tap moments, I’m sure," says singer Luke O’Neil. "Moz will probably die on the way over."

Yes, the band’s drummer, Mike Morrissey (who, when he finally arrives, does not spontaneously combust), is called Moz. That fits. With their avowed Anglophilia, moody lagered-up swagger, and songs ringing with guitars that swirl into perfect storms of cresting melodic swells, the Good North are often likened to Britpop standard bearers from Oasis to Radiohead to the Cure.

In fact, another reason they’ve assembled in their practice space is to brush up on Smiths and Morrissey covers. When I catch up with them a week later, at the fifth-anniversary celebration of WERS’s British Accents radio show, the band are on stage at the Middle East, mixing and matching members with their friends and label mates the Information (who’ll play the support slot at their CD-release party) and tearing through tight versions of "Hand in Glove" and "This Charming Man." Guitarists from both bands lock together in an estimable approximation of Johnny Marr’s crisp and tricky fretwork, and O’Neil and Information singer Max Fresen both channel Morrissey’s keening heartsick lilt with striking verisimilitude.

O’Neil, Morrissey, and guitarist Leo Crowley even have Irish surnames that echo those of the mopy Mancunians (Marr, Morrissey, Rourke, and Joyce). But the rest of the Good North line-up is more pan-global: new-ish guitarist Alex Jorge is from Santiago, Chile; and bassist Dave Riley is a New Zealand native who came to the Hub to visit his sister three years ago and has yet to leave. "We started as just a bunch of boring white Irish dudes, but now we’ve got an international flavor," O’Neil jokes. "Unfortunately, Leo and I are still just boring white Irish dudes."

Despite an affinity for the remnants of Cool Britannia, O’Neil isn’t so sure he wants his group to be pegged as an "American Britpop" band, as at least one critic has called them. "We’ve always been talked about in relation to Britrock, but we’ve started to get away from that. I guess the fact that we’re doing a Smiths cover band says a lot about our interests. But Alex isn’t even really that big of a Smiths fan. Some people compare us to stuff that half the band doesn’t even know. None of us are big Echo and the Bunnymen fans. I don’t think any of us are even big Cure fans. There is a strong undercurrent of Anglophile-type stuff, but last night at practice we played three Alice in Chains covers, just for fun. And it was awesome."

O’Neil more readily admits his admiration for the muscular melodicism of Idlewild. (The Good North got their name from the lyrics to an Idlewild song, and they’ve opened for that band.) For his part, Kiwi expat Riley was indeed influenced by antipodean power-pop bands like the Chills and the Clean. "It’s part and parcel of being from New Zealand, that whole Flying Nun label. It was good to grow up and see those bands." He adds that "if we ever did a tour of New Zealand, we’d be so hooked up. The only problem is the $2000 airfare."

It’s easy to trace the tight but expansive melodic influence of Idlewild and the Flying Nun roster in the Good North’s visceral and compulsively catchy songs. "The thing that binds ’em together is a sense of melody," Riley says. "That’s a constant in all the songs that we write. Whatever we’re doing, we agree that melody is gonna be the thing that binds what we wanna say and what we wanna do."

The songs on Life Outside Our Walls represent a great leap forward, in conception and execution, from the band’s first EP, 2002’s Define Worth Waiting, and their 2003 full-length debut, An Explanation (both Primary Voltage). "Not Feeling It" kicks in with a maelstrom of seething but symphonious guitars undergirded with Morrissey’s heavy-steady backbeat and Riley’s insistent bass. O’Neil’s fervid vocals are "emo" without any of that term’s negative connotations. "Always Works Out Wrong," with its pealing clarion-call guitars and O’Neil’s plangent invocations, recalls October-era U2. Like the Edge, Crowley and Jorge eschew conventional solos in favor of roiling atmospherics and dynamic interplay. On the other hand, "The Weight Around Your Neck" is measured and subdued, moving from a pretty, unfurling riff into a gripping melody that’s embellished with cascading drum fills and ringing harmonics.