E-Mail This Article to a Friend Magnificent seven (continued)

ROXIE: FUN-IN-THE-SUN POP MUSIC FOR MAKING OUT

Make Your Selection, Roxie’s debut EP from1999, released on the band’s own Pillow Talk label, begins with the sound of a quarter dropping into a jukebox and then the needle hitting the record. Sure enough, except for the Weezer-y power-chord crunch of the album’s guitars, the five love songs that follow sound as though they could’ve been found on the juke in the retro diner featured on the album’s cover. Roxie’s music (not to be confused with the ’70s art rockers) was refined on 2002’s Make-Out Party — which features three re-recorded songs from Selection — as playful but thoughtful power pop. Harmony-laden vocals over classic chord progressions are the band’s modus operandi. But principal songwriter Jim Keaney avoids falling into boring pop convention, throwing clever curveballs such as the modulated guitar solo on "Get Close Tonight" to keep things interesting. Keaney’s lyrics, while mostly fixated on females, mix self-deprecating humor with tongue-in-cheek bravado. "I drive all around the town/I feel so embarrassed/I don’t know what I’m gonna do/All the guys at school/They find me so uncool/It’s not easy being in these shoes," Keaney laments on "Monte Carlo," only to later brag, "With my new racin’ fin/I’m gonna show you all the races I’ll win/C’mon, let’s take a spin/I’ll see you at the finish line where all the girls’ll wish they were mine."

Roxie got perhaps their biggest break last summer when Fox Sports Net contacted them about using songs from Make-Out Party in its Making of the Patriots Cheerleaders Swimsuit Calendar TV special. Apparently, someone at FSN heard Roxie on the Internet, and the Fox producers decided the album would make the perfect soundtrack. Fox also invited the band to Gillette Stadium to shoot a music video with the cheerleaders for "Down on the Beach," which was included on the special’s accompanying DVD. Roxie continue to play shows around New England but are focusing on writing and demo-ing songs for their next full-length, which they plan to shop around to labels. According to Keaney, the new album will be similar to their previous one, as catchiness is still the prime aim. Still, he thinks the new tunes are "smarter," both lyrically and musically. With luck, a label will follow Fox’s suit and discover Roxie.

THE CALL UP: PISSED-OFF PUNK ROCK THE WAY THEY USED TO MAKE IT

Picture a young, snotty, and drunken Paul Westerberg (think Stink) singing over sped-up Tim-era Replacements tunes with some angry early hardcore like Black Flag mixed in, and you begin to get an idea of what the Call Up sound like. But despite the clear influences, singer/guitarist/primary songwriter Chris Amaral doesn’t share his hero’s impassivity. On the Replacements’ "Shut Up," Westerberg sings, "Apathy’s got a hold on me, and it won’t let go," a stark contrast to Amaral’s lyric from "A Coward’s Game": "This apathy will eat your soul alive and spit it right out at your feet."

The Call Up’s songs come loud and pissed-off, as all good punk should, but they manage to remain melodic and sometimes even anthemic. The urgency with which Amaral screams is as contagious as his melodies — a rare feat at a time when punk rock has almost become a depressing self-parody. On "Time," one of two songs from a demo the band recorded at New Alliance Studio last May, Amaral contemplates the sobering nature of mortality and a pervasive feeling of vacancy that desperately needs to be filled: "I take these pills that make me twitch/Don’t know if they work; at least it’s feeling something.... Time won’t wait for anybody/This ain’t gonna last forever/Running out of second chances/This ain’t gonna last forever."

After their previous band, the Losing Kind, failed to last forever, Amaral and drummer Mark Sarno formed the Call Up with bassist Brian Jones and former Hit To Start guitarist Mike "Shep" Shepherd in spring 2003. Almost immediately after coming together, the Call Up recorded the two-song demo. They recorded five more songs at New Alliance for a split EP with Portland’s Every Forty Seconds, which was released by Lost Glory Records in February of this year. Jones left the band and was replaced by Amaral and Sarno’s former Losing Kind bandmate Dan Wallace, who has since been replaced by Johnny Lattuca. The band recently inked a deal with local label Lonesome Recordings and plan to record their debut full-length in November, tentatively scheduling it for a late-winter release. Catch the Call Up when they play at Big D & the Kids Table’s eighth annual Halloween show October 31 at Axis, along with Kicked in the Head, Lost City Angels, and A Wilhelm Scream.

THE STERNS: A ’60S SENSIBILITY WITH AN ’80S AESTHETIC

The first thing that grabs you when you hear the Sterns is the angelic voice of singer/guitarist Chris Stern, whose pleasant lilt sounds truly distinctive over the band’s ’60s-rooted, ’80s-tinged rollicking guitar pop. Stern and guitarist Alex Stern (unrelated), who began collaborating while playing in local ska band Westbound Train, create a guitar sound that approximates what it might be like if the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck were in the same band. The two Sterns’ ringing guitars are grounded by the group’s airtight rhythm section. Emeen Zarookian, who possesses a McCartney-esque pop instinct on the bass, and drummer Andrew Sadoway and keyboardist Michael Six quickly learned the songs (on which Chris and Alex had been working since 2002) in time to play the Sterns’ first show, in November 2003. Soon after, the Sterns entered Galaxy Park Studio in Allston with engineer Richard Marr (Gigolo Aunts, the Gravel Pit) to work on an album. Completed just last month, Say Goodbye to the Camera is one of the best debut albums by an unsigned Boston band in recent memory (although, as we mentioned above, the best music often goes unnoticed, even by us at the Phoenix — gasp!).

Though the songs and the sound are clearly influenced by ’80s Brit-pop, Camera comes off as less derivative than the seemingly endless supply of clone bands to pop up during the current ’80s resurgence, due in large part to the Sterns’ masterful songwriting and arranging. Subtle but vital vocal harmonies, tasteful keyboard melodies, and pre-choruses that perfectly set up and transition into infectious choruses combine to form the expertly crafted songs that transcend the band’s influences.

The TintProficient power pop with punk-rock underpinnings

The Tint emerged in 2000 from the ashes of two ska bands. Singer/guitarist Evan Evans (real name Evan Ouellette) and keyboardist Sean Will played in the Brass Monkeys, and bassist Michael Geher and drummer Sean Greene made up the rhythm section of Big Lick. And though the Tint forgo ska for a sort of timeless power pop, the genre’s influence lies beneath the surface — in Will’s keyboard melodies, Greene’s rhythmically upbeat drumming, and Geher’s bass arpeggios — especially on their first album, 2002’s Captain, which was released on the local indie imprint Primary Voltage Records (the Charms, the Information, Baby Strange). The band tweaked the buoyant sound of their debut for 2003’s The 11th Hour EP (Primary Voltage), which formed something slightly darker and more varied, despite containing half the number of songs of Captain. Evans laments his "broken mentality" on the melancholy, downtempo, ambitiously textured "Electricity," a song that might not have fit with the more straight-ahead tunes on Captain, but one that sounds right at home on 11th Hour. Although Evans’s songs remain grounded in the pop aesthetics of Squeeze and early Elvis Costello, his lyrics have become slightly more cynical and his guitar a little vicious. Toward the end of the EP’s raucous title track, Evans furiously pounds a dissonant major-second interval in a sort of crazed, one-note guitar solo.

The band apparently are continuing their musical exploration, since they’ve mentioned taking their sound in a more "ambient" direction, stepping back from playing shows and working on material for a new album. Evans and Tim Lyons, who played bass with the Tint while Geher took a break from the band to pursue a degree in accounting, flew to Liverpool to do an acoustic set at the International Pop Overthrow Festival on October 23. The band played the IPO Festival in Los Angeles in July, and are playing it again when it hits T.T. the Bear’s Place on November 6.

Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com.