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The new attitude partly explains where the Beatles cover, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," comes in — though it’s worth noting that they covered George Harrison’s original demo (which has a different feel and an extra verse) and that Yang’s vocal, the best of the album, if not her whole career, gets closer to the song’s underlying heartache than the Fab Four version did. "It’s easy to cover a song nobody knows, but in this case it’s a song everybody in the world has heard," Yang observes. Adds Krukowski, "We took it as a challenge. For one thing, everyone associates that song with Eric Clapton’s guitar-hero solo, and we wanted to hear what our own guitar hero, Kurihara, could do with it. But we were also thinking of the story that George Harrison went to Abbey Road on his birthday and made that demo by himself, so to us it’s the sad birthday song." Yang finishes, "It’s a very affecting song, about the fruitlessness of certain relationships. And it’s an emotional turning point on the album."

Nothing can be more pop than a concept album, and D&N admit, with a certain amount of reluctance, that they’ve made one: "God, this sounds so Spinal Tap — ‘Hey man, this record has a beginning, middle and end! It may even have some parts before the end and near the middle.’ " In fact, the duo have been politically active over the past few years — they worked with Thurston Moore and others in the loose-knit group Musicians for Peace — and one starting point for their disc was the prospect of Bush’s being re-elected. "The idea didn’t get very far, but we meant it to be a community record, with people we’ve met in different parts of the world," Yang says. Instead, they worked touches from African, Brazilian, and English music into the songs. Krukowski explains, "We were thinking that George Bush wants to create a world where you can’t go abroad, the dollar is worth less, everybody hates Americans. So we’re interested in the rest of the world, even if he isn’t. We wanted to say something positive in the midst of really dark times, and that’s as political as it gets."

The new disc also coincides with the shake-up in their business life: for the first time, they have a manager (Ben Goldberg, who runs the Ba Da Bing label) and their own record label, after years with Sub Pop. Krukowski explains, "Nothing ever soured artistically with Sub Pop, it just seemed like we were tired of asking other people to do things for us. Other people should take care of you when you’re young and in a band, it’s a parent/child relationship. I think we were ready to take care of ourselves."

WHEN WORD GOT OUT last week that Inman Square’s Abbey Lounge had changed hands, local cynics were already predicting the demise of the well-loved hotspot. Not so fast, say the three new Abbey owners. For one thing, they aren’t exactly outsiders: J. Grimaldi (who led the old Abbey house band Schnockered), Steve Giannino (the club’s long-time bartender), and Eric Anderson (who built the adjoining Z Wine Bar and was also in Schnockered) have all been part of the Abbey family for years. And the aim, says Grimaldi, is to keep the Abbey from changing too much. "It’s not easy to hold onto an independent business in a place like Inman Square," Grimaldi said last week. "We want there to be more music, maybe seven nights a week. Our goal is to save it from Starbucks."

Still, the Abbey won’t be quite the same. For one thing, there’s already a "pub stage" in the front corner where the bathrooms used to be. The new stage is a major part of the Abbey’s plan to bring in more music, with acts playing the earlier part of most evenings. It was formally launched with the Dents’ CD-release party last weekend. More renovations will follow; Grimaldi says the main Abbey stage may even move to the other end of the room. "We had to satisfy a bunch of city ordinances when we built the wine bar — installing sprinklers, moving the bathrooms. So we want to finish the cosmetic changes — a new paint job, maybe get the picture of Bobby Orr back on the wall."

The biggest change, though, is that booking agent Andrea Gillis will be booking the pub stage but leaving the main room; Anderson will take over bookings there. "It’s my fifth year doing it, and I needed to focus on my own music," says Gillis, whose solo CD was well received last month. "There’ll be some changes, but we still want this to be a home to everybody. It’s not going to get all corporate."

Damon & Naomi celebrate the release of The Earth Is Blue with a listening party at ZuZu, 474 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, this Tuesday, February 15, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.; call (617) 864-3278.