The traditional music business is hemorrhaging cash, so record labels are increasingly finding themselves turning to an old money-making stalwart: the box set. The latter half of 2011 saw a seemingly never-ending parade of “Special,” “Deluxe,” “Super Deluxe,” and other superlative-laden collections from a variety of artists, often including re-recordings, never-before-heard songs, behind-the-scenes supplements, and of course, vinyl. You know, the kind of features that leave diehard fans salivating as they gaze longingly through the window of a record store (remember those?!?). Here, we break down some of the best offerings for the music fan on your Christmas list*.

AC/DC — Backtracks Collectors Box Set ($189)

This updated version of the band’s 2009 box set wins the award for coolest design, hands down. Why? Its contents (including three CDs, two DVDs, one LP and a hardcover photo book) are housed in A WORKING GUITAR AMPLIFIER. No joke. The recordings capture live and/or rare versions of AC/DC’s signature hits, and the DVDs include music videos and live performances up through 2009. But let’s face it — nothing can top flipping through concert photos from the band’s earliest tour dates while you plug in and jam out to “Highway to Hell,” no assembly required.

Beach Boys — The Smile Sessions Box Set ($140)

This treasure chest of the Beach Boys’ Album That Never Was contains five CDs, two LPs, two 7″ singles, dozens of unreleased photos, a 60-page book with input from the original band members as well as members of their entourage, and more. The CDs document the recording sessions in 1966 and 1967 for Smile, the follow-up album to Pet Sounds which was never released. (Vocalist Brian Wilson put out solo versions of the songs on his 2004 record of the same name.) Though it’s available in a significantly cheaper two-disc format, the “Good Vibrations” disc alone makes the expansive box set worth the extra dough: nearly 90 minutes documenting the piece-by-piece assemblage of the band’s classic single, with Wilson’s perfectionist genius on full display.

Also Available: 2-CD Deluxe Edition ($24); 2-LP Vinyl Edition ($26)

Elvis Presley — Young Man with the Big Beat ($104)

The five discs in this collector’s must-have are loaded with live versions and alternate takes of classics like “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Hound Dog,” plus interviews with Presley and two discs of digitally remastered original recordings. An 80-page book highlights rare photos and documents, and the set even includes replicas of ’50s and ’60s memorabilia such as ticket stubs and promotional posters. It’s a box set fit for a King.

Nirvana — Nevermind Super Deluxe Edition (Price varies)

Good luck with this one. In their infinite wisdom, the marketing team at Geffen Records decided to release only 10,000 copies of the “Super Deluxe Edition” (containing four CDs, a DVD and a 90-page book) in the U.S. in October, and 30,000 for the rest of the world. So, fans who didn’t jump on it right away are out of luck (although, private sellers are currently advertising the set through Amazon for as little as $115). Those who opt for the cheaper 2-CD “Deluxe Edition” of Nevermind ($18) will get the original album, enhanced by B-sides, live versions and rehearsal takes. Vinyl enthusiasts who are willing to shell out $71 for the 4-LP “Deluxe Edition (Vinyl)” will be treated to the original album, plus alternate recordings. A word to the wise though: so far, buyer consensus on the vinyl version is that the remastered versions are less than stellar.

Pearl Jam

Not a box set per se, but grunge fans can put together their own Pearl Jam bundle in celebration of the band’s 20th anniversary. In 2011 alone, the Seattle rockers put out a coffee table book ($40), a DVD ($18) and a soundtrack ($19) to accompany the illuminating Cameron Crowe-directed documentary Pearl Jam: Twenty. In addition, completists will want to pick up the new live album Live on Ten Legs ($15), as well as a three-CD package containing deluxe editions of the band’s second and third albums, vs. and Vitalogy, as well as a live recording at Boston’s Orpheum Theater ($29).

Pink Floyd — Discovery Box Set: The Complete Studio Recordings ($180); Dark Side of the Moon: Immersion Box Set ($120); Wish You Were Here: Immersion Box Set ($120)

Zone out in your bedroom and fire up a … ahem, blacklight, as these sweet psychedelic sounds take you back to the 1960s and ’70s. The comprehensive Discovery collection includes a whopping 16 discs of remastered versions of the group’s 14 albums, complete with new packaging and lyric booklets for each. The set also includes a 60-page book of artwork. Floyd is also rolling out “Immersion Box Sets” of its most beloved albums (probably a better bet for more casual fans), which feature the original recordings, plus remixed and remastered versions, demos and live recordings. Both the Dark Side and Wish You Were Here special editions also include memorabilia such as coasters, a scarf and ticket/backstage pass replicas from the original tours. But be sure to save some money as you shop — the Immersion Box Set of The Wall is due out in February.

The Smiths – The Smiths Complete ($64); The Smiths Complete (vinyl) ($245)

The limited-edition (only 3,000 copies!) Super Deluxe box set is more or less off the market (selling for upwards of $650 by private sellers), and there’s no wonder it got snapped up so quickly. A wet dream for any diehard Morrissey/Marr fan, the set included CD and vinyl versions of all eight Smiths albums, plus 25 7″ singles, a poster, prints of the original album sleeves, and a DVD of the band’s music videos. Procrastinators will have to settle for one of two still-available but less cool versions. The $64 CD set (a steal) includes digitally remastered versions of all eight albums, while the pricier vinyl set contains the digital remasters in CD and vinyl form, as well as a booklet and poster.

U2 — Achtung Baby: Super Deluxe Edition ($140); Achtung Baby: Uber Deluxe Edition ($439)

This 10-disc (six CDs, four DVDs) set is essentially two box sets for the price of one — fans get remastered versions of the Irish quartet’s 1991 album Achtung Baby, as well as the follow-up, 1993′s Zooropa, plus B-sides and remixes. But the best inclusion is the “Kindergarten” disc, which features “baby” versions (aw) of the tracks on Achtung Baby. (“One” is a standout). The DVDs include music videos, live performances and bonus footage. The set also comes with a hardback book and 16 art prints. Uber fans may opt for the … well, “Uber Deluxe” limited edition (whose job is it to name these things?), which includes all of the above, plus five 7″ singles, badges, stickers and — wait for it — a pair of Bono’s “The Fly” sunglasses. Housed in a magnetic tile box, it’ll set you back a mere $440.

Also available: 2-CD “Deluxe Edition” ($30); Achtung Baby Vinyl Box ($132)

NEW YORK — We’re officially in the home stretch! More than halfway through the 2011 CMJ Music Marathon, festival attendees only have two more nights to check must-sees off their lists.

Here are Blast’s picks for the marathon’s final 48 hours.

Said the Whale – Friday at Pianos, 3:20 p.m. (Planetary Group Showcase)

O Canada! This exuberant indie quintet from Vancouver is part of an all-afternoon party at Pianos in Manhattan. Think a less strange, more distorted version of The Decemberists.

We Are Augustines – Friday at Spike Hill, 8 p.m. / Saturday at Public Assembly, 1:25 p.m. (Brooklyn Vegan day party; not part of CMJ)

The Brooklyn trio is one of the most ubiquitous acts at this year’s festival, having rocked venues from the Bowery Ballroom to the lobby of the Ace Hotel. They’re finding time to squeeze in two more performances tonight and tomorrow afternoon. Not to be missed for fans of heartfelt, Bruce Springsteen-esque rock.

Dum Dum Girls – Friday at Mercury Lounge, 1 a.m. / Saturday at Bowery Ballroom, midnight

One of the bigger acts at this year’s festival, SubPop darlings Dum Dum Girls released their sophomore album, Only in Dreams, last month. The night owls who make it to these hot tickets will surely bounce along to the group’s 2010 hit, “Jail La La.”

Caveman – Saturday at Fontana’s, 5 p.m. (Reverb Day Party)

This New York-based five-piece plays melodic lo-fi, with reverb-tinged vocals and gut-punching hooks. Their debut album, CoCo Beware, isn’t out until November (though it’s available now digitally), and look for the buzz around these guys to reach a tipping point in early 2012.

An Horse – Saturday at Highline Ballroom, 7:35 p.m.

The co-ed Australian duo (Blast favorites) bring their hook-laden alt-rock to the Highline Ballroom as the opening act for singer/songwriter Kevin Devine.

En Vogue – Saturday at B.B. King’s, 9 p.m.

Yep, you read that right. ‘Nuff said.

Jacuzzi Boys – Saturday at Public Assembly, 10 p.m.

Any festival-goers who haven’t sufficiently damaged their eardrums will want to catch this silly, loud surf-rock trio from Miami. Singer Gabriel Alcala, who channels his inner Joey Ramone as he approaches performances like a kid in a candy store, looks like a cross between Wayne Campbell and The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas.

Pepper Rabbit – Friday at Music Hall of Williamsburg, 8 p.m.

The Los Angeles via New Orleans duo has toured with Ra Ra Riot, Passion Pit and Freelance Whales. Performing live as a trio, the group incorporates a smorgasbord of instruments into jovial, effects-laden pop.

jENNiNGS – Saturday at Rockwood Music Hall, 2 p.m.

Critically acclaimed siren jENNiNGS, will once again prove that the best gifts come in the smallest packages. With full band in tow, she performs a free show at this tiny space on the Lower East Side Saturday afternoon.

Be sure to check out Blast’s complete CMJ wrap-up on Monday!

For their third album, “Sound Kapital,” Montreal husband and wife duo Handsome Furs borrowed a page from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Zero” playbook, setting guitars aside and writing the entire record on keyboards. The result is what is so far the best release of 2011 (seriously, the main synthesizer riff alone on standout track “Repatriated” is better than anything on Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”).

Though Handsome Furs is considered Dan Boeckner’s side project when he’s not fronting Wolf Parade, “Sound Kapital” might reverse those credentials. The strongest material from either act to date, the record establishes his collaboration with wife Alexei Perry as, first and foremost, an electronic outfit. It’s a cohesive collection that simultaneously conveys a sense of isolation and a feeling of dance-hall community.

The ideas of home and heartbreak, often intertwined, factor prominently on nearly every song. The first line Boeckner utters on opening track “When I Get Back” is “When I get back home … I won’t be the same no more.” Later, on the space age-y “Memories of the Future,” he adds, “Nostalgia never meant much to me … I let my memories go.” The aforementioned “Repatriated” churns along towards an eruption of guitars, percussion and keyboard effects, with Boeckner spitting out, “I’ve seen the future / I will never be repatriated.” These observations are even more impactful given that the backing vocals and half of the instrumentation come courtesy of his life partner.

“Cheap Music” and “Damage” are punishing, three-minute assaults, while “No Feelings” sounds like it could be a leftover Wolf Parade number. Cuts like first single “What About Us” and “Memories of the Future” have Boeckner putting his considerable song structuring skills to use, seamlessly transitioning a track from an exuberant dance number to a more subdued lament. “I feel alone, but I feel all right,” he sings in the final moments of “Memories.” That sentiment, in a nutshell, encapsulates the entire record.

NEW YORK — “Flawed Logic,” the sophomore album from Philadelphia’s American Babies, is the perfect soundtrack for a cross-country summer road trip. In fact, Tom Hamilton (the frontman and driving force behind the band, also known for his work with the electro-rock outfit Brothers Past), calls the record a “collection of mental snapshots” from his time spent observing events around the country. Fans of Brothers Past might raise an eyebrow at Hamilton’s newer material, which draws heavily from folk, country and general Americana influences, but strong songwriting is still at the heart of Hamilton’s work, regardless of genre.

The singer recently took a break from rehearsals to chat with Blast about the new record, the inspiration for his songwriting, and his decision to break away from electronic music and form American Babies in 2007.

BLAST: Who are your main musical influences, both for American Babies and for Brothers Past?

TOM HAMILTON: God, it’s a fucking lengthy list. I definitely don’t separate them. I feel like you can hear my influences in either one. The obvious ones, The Beatles, The Dead, Dylan, stuff like that. Radiohead, huge influence. Stereolab, they have a record called “Dots and Loops” that redefined my entire idea of music, like the late ‘90s. Low, they put out a record, “The Great Destroyer” in like ’05, I think. (That was) another one that was just like, I heard this record and it shuffled the papers around in my head and kind of made me redefine what was possible in music. Broken Social Scene’s first record flipped me around. A few years ago, I got really into Motown, and that’s kind of where I am now, as far as this newest Babies record. Listening to a lot of Motown and Stacks records, stuff like that. That stuff just absolutely destroys me. Old Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. You just can’t beat it.

For me, the thing with music, it’s not what you do. It’s how you do it. And I feel like the bands that I listen to, that I really like, what they’re doing, the style of music, really has nothing to do with where my pleasure comes from. It’s the fact that there is a sincerity in every note played and sung. Like Springsteen. It’s so genuine and so sincere. These people don’t do these things because it’ll make them money and because they have to. They do it because they have to, primally. Like, it’s an animalistic thing. They need to express these things. They need to get it out and connect with people. And that’s the common thread in all those bands that I named that I like. It’s all very sincere music. That’s what I try to do, no matter if it’s electronic music or folk music or blues or whatever. It’s about being sincere and genuine and urgent.

BLAST: Would you say “Flawed Logic” has a unifying theme? What events inspired the songs?

TH: I started making this thing, and everything was fucked up and everybody I knew was fucked up. The Wall Street shit, and there’s fuckin’ 80 wars going on. My friends are unemployed. My brother is on his way to getting deployed and going to Afghanistan. I had other friends that had to go to Iraq. Until that point, everything I always wrote about was, you know, chicks and love. You know, standard things you can write songs about. But when I was getting this record together, all these things, all these unavoidable things, I just couldn’t turn a blind eye to it. And I had to talk about it. I had to say something.

It was a really awkward situation because I’d never been really topical in my songwriting, you know, that much. Because personally, I hate self-righteous pricks. I hate when you turn on CNN and Jeaneane Garafolo’s on there talking about the war. It’s like, we’re entertainers. I feel like there is a line there. For me, it was a very touchy thing. I was like, wow. I have all these feelings, and there’s a feeling of urgency to talk about it, but I have no idea how to do it without being heavy-handed, without sounding like just somebody ridiculous, like Bono talking about AIDS or something. So, it was a huge challenge, and scary for me kind of. Being that far away from my comfort zone. I could have easily just written another record about my last girlfriend, you know?

So, sitting back and finding my voice was like the whole thing. Just talking to people and observing like, you know, how my brother’s family was dealing with his thing with the military, talking with my friends who lost their jobs or lost all their friggin’ money and how they’re dealing with it, and just seeing how it all goes. My friends who are married, how is it affecting them? When I was on the road I would talk to people all over the country. Just, how are all these things affecting all these people? I just basically took mental Polaroids and each one of the songs on the record, they all came from one of those mental snapshots.

BLAST: How does your approach to songwriting differ with this band?

TH: Wow, that’s a good question. I don’t know if it actually differs. (With Brothers Past) there were two songwriters. I wrote a majority of (the songs), but the keyboard player, Tom McKee, also wrote some stuff. I guess there was more collaboration in the Brothers Past thing. But as far as just like personally, the songwriting, it was never that much different. Even with the Brothers Past stuff, it was like, I would write the song on acoustic guitar or piano or something, and then I would have to dress it up in all of this other stuff. Which I feel like sometimes can get in the way of the song.

With the Babies stuff, it’s much more of a challenge. Because with Brothers Past,, there were times where, if a song kind of wasn’t totally happening, I could just, like, throw in a cool synthesizer line or something. I could throw in ear candy to kind of make up for a lack of something in the song. If a song isn’t really happening and isn’t like, really grooving, you can just throw a 404 beat under it and people just like it because it makes them move. There’s plenty of bands out there that make not that great songs and just put a dance beat under it, and people love it because there’s a visceral reaction to it. They don’t notice that you’re not saying anything in the song or that the song isn’t that great. All they know is that their ass is shaking. And that’s kind of cheating.

In American Babies, I don’t have that option. It’s kind of like, it’s just standard rock and roll. There’s no hiding behind anything. If I don’t really like this song, there’s nothing I can do to hide that. I have to just write it better or throw it out. So it kind of keeps me more honest.

BLAST: So you think it’s easier to make electronic music, even though there are more components to the songs?

TH: With the way that these programs are today, it’s exponentially easier. If you’re a producer and you are making your tracks, you’re actually recording the drums and you’re playing all the instruments and there’s original thought in there, I think it’s awesome. But more so than not, a kid gets a MacBook Pro and a copy of the program Ableton and you can buy samples. You can download samples. It’s all other people’s work that you’re just taking and, like, putting together. It’s the difference between, like, buying a puzzle that is the Mona Lisa or getting a canvas and painting the goddamn thing yourself. One of those takes an amazing amount of skill and talent and passion, and one of those things just takes the ability to fucking connect the pieces.

BLAST: What role did music play in your life growing up?

TH: It’s just always been around. My mom plays the piano and the cello. There was always music involved in my house. So, from a pretty young age, I was captivated by it. Whether (my parents) were listening to vinyl all the time, or the fact that my dad had, like, a local band, guys his age that just liked to hang out and play music.

BLAST: What was the first album that you fell in love with?

TH: My dad was a huge Deadhead, way into the Grateful Dead, which in turn made me also way into them. My dad gave me a cassette of this Grateful Dead show. It’s from Red Rocks, Colorado in 1978. Still, to this day, it’s one of my favorite things in the world. So that was the first thing that was, like, mine. And I listened to the shit out of it. I was like, this is awesome. To this day, I can listen to it. I know every note of every solo and whatever. But an actual record would be … I was really young, probably like three or four, and I loved Eric Clapton’s “Just One Night.” It’s a live record he put out, the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. I had a toy record player but it played real records. And I can vividly remember yelling at my mom, saying I wanted the cow record. Because the record label’s logo was a cow. … That was my shit, man. I loved that. That was a great, great, great album, and I listened to it nonstop when I was very, very young.

BLAST: When did you first start playing music?

TH: I started playing drums when I was about 5. My dad was a drummer and just kind of all-around rock musician guy. He played drums and bass and guitar and stuff like that. And he got my older brother playing drums when he was about 6 or so. And then, you know, me being the little guy, whatever my older brother was doing, I wanted to do, obviously. Since I was old enough to basically hold the sticks, I was like, I want to do that, because my brother was doing that. So I started playing drums when I was 6 and I took that pretty seriously until I was, I’d say, 12 or 13. And then I started playing guitar when I was about 10 or 11.

BLAST: What prompted your change in musical styles, from electronic music with Brothers Past to more roots rock with American Babies?

TH: I grew up on the roots stuff. I grew up listening to Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and obviously The Beatles and all that stuff. Rock and roll in general is like a mentality. … I mean, it’s a reaction to something. When I got into the electronic stuff, it was new and it was exciting and it was a different thing. And I was like, wow, this is great. And then I guess, around 2006, 2007, it became kind of abundantly clear that any dude with a laptop and a synthesizer can make this stuff. It became so over-saturated and easy to do. The innovation was out of it, the excitement. It didn’t seem genuine to me. It didn’t seem honest. It didn’t seem cutting edge. And for me, that was the whole allure, was trying to bring songwriting and electronic music together. It just seemed like it got very just watered down, kind of.

So I went back and focused more on the song. I got very lost in (electronic music with) dressing songs up in production, with bleeps and boops and drum machines and weird things. The main focus should be the song, and it was a reaction to where I was at the time. I was just, like, so engulfed in all this electronic stuff and I was like, you know what? I want to strip it down. I want it to be about the song. You can’t hide behind anything if you’re just recording songs. There’s no production that can make a song great. It’s like, oh no. If the tune’s not there, it’s not there, and that’s kind of it.

BLAST: How did your bandmates in Brothers Past react?

TH: Originally, the idea was for that band to be playing this stuff. We put out an electro pop record and people really liked it and it got great reviews and it was selling really well and we were doing really well for ourselves. And I was like, hey, man, I think it’d be funny if the next record we put out, we make it like “Led Zeppelin III.” … The first half of that record is, like, punishing rock and roll. The second half of the record is all acoustic. And I was like, let’s put out like a “Zeppelin III” type of record next, to kind of show the extremes of what we’re doing. Like, hey, yeah, we do electronic music and stuff like that, but we can also really just craft a song. I wanted to make a record that was like, Side A, the most intense electronic music possible, and Side B, the exact opposite of that, which is just like stripped-down acoustic songs. And the guys didn’t really think that was a great idea and I was basically told, hey, man, you want to play that kind of music, you should start another band. So I did.

BLAST: How did you come up with the band name?

TH: I started writing these tunes, these more acoustic songs, with the idea of it being a part of my other band. And when I started getting into the whole thing, I started writing this song, and it was called “American Babies.” And it took me forever to write this song. I don’t know why, but it fought me pretty hard the whole way through. I had this grandiose idea of what the song was supposed to be. And when I was planning the recording sessions and all this stuff … I wanted to get all my friends around that I knew to come in and play these songs. The idea for the song “American Babies” was, there was a middle section of it that is this big, like, cacophony of sound. And it was basically like the kitchen sink song to me. I just wanted to get everybody that played on any part of the record … which was a pretty large number of people … everybody had to play something in this section of the song. It just kind of clicked for me. I was like halfway through the record and I was like, what do I even call this band? That song, it was symbolic to me of what this project was going to be. And I was like, well, I’ll name it after the song. American Babies. That sounds good.

BLAST: Do you think you’ll ever go back to electronic stuff?

TH: Brothers Past still plays here and there, for sure. We’re mildly active. And I mean, I do enjoy that stuff, the electronic music. When I do it now, I do it less frequently than before, so it’s fun for me. I don’t get wrapped up into the whole scene and stuff and get frustrated. … My passion is songwriting, and the Babies, I feel, are the purest form of my voice that I’ve had in my career. And I’m very excited about it.

American Babies are touring throughout summer 2011. For tour dates, visit americanbabies.net.

There aren’t many people who can reference, with utter sincerity, “the good thing that came out of falling off a cliff.” Jane Wiedlin, the pixie-ish guitarist for New Wave chart-toppers The Go-Go’s, is one of them.

The silver lining she’s referring to is the fact that last year, a knee injury she suffered after, yes, literally falling off of a cliff while hiking forced the cancellation of what was supposed to be a farewell tour for the band.

A year later, the tour has been rescheduled — and rechristened. The farewell theme has been nixed. Instead, the “Ladies Gone Wild” tour, which kicked off May 27 in Las Vegas, is in celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Go-Go’s chart-topping debut record, “Beauty and the Beat.” To coincide with the outing, special editions of the album (which spawned the hits “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat”) were released in May, including a hot pink vinyl version. In August, the band will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“(After) taking a year off, when we re-launched the tour, we decided … we’re really not sure that it’s a farewell tour,” Wiedlin told Blast. “Having time to think about it, we decided we didn’t want to be so finite in our plans. It’s best to leave an open door when it comes to The Go-Go’s, because things come up that we want to do, and projects that we’d like to do together. So it just seemed better not to break up yet.”

Meaning that The Go-Go’s won’t become part of the club of artists who embark on a series of seemingly endless “farewell” tours?

“I really don’t want to be one of those bands,” Wiedlin says emphatically, emitting a girlish cackle. “That’s not me as a person. I try and do what I say and say what I mean, and I think that it’s a good policy for the band as well.”

When Wiedlin chatted with Blast in April from her home in Los Angeles, she and drummer Gina Schock, who are neighbors, were planning to start rehearsals the next day (“rocking out in my basement,” as she described it). Wiedlin, for one, spoke with the infectious exuberance of someone looking forward to a summer road trip with her best girlfriends. Fans can expect to hear the band’s biggest hits, as well as some cover songs and potentially even some new material, she said.

“Thirty years ago, if you had told me we would be doing (this anniversary tour) today, I would have laughed in your face,” she admitted. “It just seems incredible that we’re still together and that people still want to see us and people still love those songs. It’s very flattering and heartening to know.”

“I love the record still,” she added. “I think the songs hold up after all those years, and although the sound quality sounds kind of silly to me in retrospect, I think that the actual songwriting is still strong, and the way the songs sound live is very strong.”

Formed in Los Angeles in 1978, The GoGo’s have sold more than 7 million albums to date, and hits like “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “Vacation” are still radio staples. Though this run is sometimes mischaracterized as a “reunion” tour, in fact, the band has been “reunited” for more than 20 years, Wiedlin pointed out.

“Even though we don’t do The Go-Go’s 24/7 anymore, we still consider ourselves to have been back together since the fall of 1990,” she explained. “I think we’ve played every year since 1994 except for last year. … We just don’t play year-round.”

But to say that this tour will be a bit tamer for the ladies, all of whom are now in their 50s, than the dates in their heyday would be an understatement. The members have spoken openly about their hard-partying lifestyles back in the day.

“Unfortunately, we’re getting older and it’s harder on the body,” Wiedlin said. “But mentally, once we go over the songs a few times, most of them just come right back right to your brain, because we’ve been doing them for so many years.”

“For sure there’s gonna be a whole lot less partying going on, because three of The Go-Go’s are completely sober, and two of us are not literally sober, but a lot calmer than we were 30 years ago,” she said, laughing. “Probably slightly more dignified but not a lot, because basically we’re all a bunch of clowns at heart. So we will still be goofy. … The thing about The Go-Go’s is, of course, it is a business, but it’s also super fun and it doesn’t take drugs and alcohol and cigarettes to make it fun.”

It’s easy to cynically write off bands from decades past trotting out their classics on tour every few years as mere money-making schemes, but one gets the sense that for The Go-Go’s, it’s more than that. What’s perhaps most remarkable is that the quintet — Wiedlin, Schock, singer Belinda Carlisle, bassist Kathy Valentine and guitarist Charlotte Caffey — have all managed to stay friends through the years.

“It’s the longest relationship any of us have ever been in,” Wiedlin noted. “We definitely have our ups and downs, just like any relationship, but the bottom line is, when the five of us come together and we play music, it’s something magical that we feel, and obviously other people feel it too, because they come and see us play. That’s the only way I can explain it. It makes all the sort of bad times worth it, because it’s so great and fun when we get to play together.”

“I think as you get older, it’s natural to become more introspective,” she added. “And certainly knowing that it’s the 30-year anniversary of our groundbreaking record definitely makes all of us think about it more. There’s a lot of acknowledgement going on between the five band members as well. A lot of like, ‘I love you. I’m so happy we’re doing this.’ There’s a lot of sentiment going on. I don’t know if it’s the 30-year thing, or if it’s just that we’re getting older, but that’s the state of affairs in Go-Go land.”

The Go-Go’s, who let their instruments speak for themselves rather than relying on elaborate costumes and stage sets, stand in sharp contrast to the most notable modern female icons — i.e. hyper-sexualized artists like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. While expressing admiration for the fact that Perry and Lady Gaga both write their own material, Wiedlin said she’s surprised there aren’t more all-female rock bands around today.

“When (we found success) 30 years ago, I thought it would just bust the doors wide open and you would see just as many girl musicians as you would guys,” she reflected. “But it hasn’t really happened that way. I mean, it’s changing a little bit obviously, but I mean, I don’t really know of any, like, girl bands. Everyone gets on my case when I say that, because of course there are some. … I just think it’s weird that it hasn’t changed more.”

Aside from smashing barriers, one would be hard-pressed to find evidence that The Go-Go’s have even gotten the recognition they deserve in breaking into the boys’ club of rock ‘n’ roll, despite their place in history as the first all-female group who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to have a #1 album.

“We don’t really seem to get a lot of acknowledgement or credit for that … and it is a fact,” Wiedlin said. “I feel like a jerk even bringing it up, but I guess somebody has to.”

Case in point? The band was inexplicably left out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s recent “Women in Rock” exhibit, which opened in May.

“It’s just kind of baffling,” Wiedlin said. “Because we love the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and we would love to be in that exhibit.” (Representatives from The Rock Hall have said the organization tried to get in touch with the band and was unable to.)

“I’ll say (what) I said 30 years ago and I believe it’s still true,” she added — and there’s that cackle again. “The Go-Go’s are like Twinkies. Everyone loves them, but nobody wants to admit it.”

The guitarist, who admits she lives in “a bubble” when it comes to new music (“I’ll hear a song that came out in the early ‘90s and be like, “Oh, this is great. What’s this new artist?” Or it’ll be The Strokes or The Killers or The White Stripes or something. I’m really behind. I’m ashamed to admit it.”), nonetheless remarked about how much the industry has changed since The Go-Go’s got their start.

“The (current) music business is much harder,” she said. “It’s gotten bigger and smaller at the same time, because it’s much harder to be a successful musician, but there sure are a lot more bands and musicians out there. But I don’t see that anyone’s really making money. I mean, it seems like there’s like four people making money.”

“They seem to have to work so hard,” she went on. “I remember back in the day when we were popular, I felt like we were working every second of the day. But nowadays, people seem to do so much more. … Everything is just so much bigger now, and I don’t think I know how they do it. It looks exhausting.”

Just before we hang up, Wiedlin interrupts me for one final endearing add-on.

“Feel free to edit me if I sound like an idiot. I just don’t want to come off as, like, this bitter old lady or anything, ‘cause I’m not,” she said (which is pretty funny, because with her distinctive high-pitched voice, I don’t think Wiedlin could sound bitter, or old, if she tried). “I’m really happy and grateful for everything.”

Coming from someone who can find the bright side of falling off a cliff, it’s impossible not to believe her.

The Go-Go’s are scheduled to play the Bank of America Pavilion on June 9, with the B-52s. For complete tour dates, visit www.gogos.com.

What happened to Ben Gibbard? On Death Cab for Cutie’s latest offering, “Codes & Keys,” the band’s typically sad sack frontman sounds — could it be? — downright cheery.

Gone are the days of lamenting love lost (or never found in the first place). Throughout “Codes and Keys,” even when addressing these themes, Gibbard — now happily married to actress/singer Zooey Deschanel — seems like more of an outside observer, with the songs often referring to an ambiguous “you” rather than his typical first-person narrative. On previous efforts, the singer likely would have sympathized and even identified with the characters described in tracks like “Some Boys” — who “don’t know how to love” or “are singing the blues.” Here, it sounds like he’s looking at them with pity.

Musically, the songs are good, but none packs the emotional gut-punch of some earlier offerings. Event the strongest moments on “Codes and Keys” — including the head-nodding title track, which features lush strings, and the moody, slow-building “Doors Unlocked and Open” — don’t live up to the best material on any of the band’s previous efforts. Gibbard’s gooey lovesickness becomes a bit much on the drippy “Unobstructed Views” (“There’s no light / in the sky / just our love”). Production-wise, guitarist Chris Walla returns to the helm and stretches the band’s musical boundaries to unprecedented limits. Every instrument, vocals included, gets the effects treatment.

Self-reflection and paradigm shifts are big themes on the record. Not the least of these is related to Gibbard’s re-examination of Los Angeles. It wasn’t too long ago that he was observing of the city where he now resides, “I can’t see why you’d want to live here.”

At other times, Gibbard sounds like he’s attempting to throw his name into consideration as a possible replacement for Oprah— or at the very least, penning a draft of a self-help manual. On the downright hopeful-sounding first single, “You Are a Tourist,” he notes, “When you find yourself a villain in the story you have written, it’s plain to see / that sometimes the best intentions are in need of redemptions, would you agree?”

“Codes and Keys” makes it clear that Gibbard has truly found domestic bliss. But for longtime fans who appreciated his knack for making heartbreak flow from the speakers and envelop the listener in its warm embrace, the album might be a tough pill to swallow.

Genre: Indie rock

Label: Atlantic Records

Rating: 3/5

NEW YORK — For Los Angeles trio Foster the People, much of 2011 has been spent in a whirlwind of hype. After the band emerged as one of the most talked-about bands at the SXSW festival in March, the buzz continued to build behind their Top 10 single “Pumped Up Kicks.” Even though the band’s debut full-length, “Torches,” was only released this week, several shows on their upcoming tour, which stretches into the summer and includes a performance at the Sasquatch Festival in Washington, are already sold out.

“Torches” is an eclectic blend of pop, funk and soul influences, with most songs defying conventional categorization. In fact, according to frontman and chief songwriter Mark Foster, it’s the complexity of the songs that led to the group’s formation in the first place. While writing material for what he intended to be a solo endeavor, the singer realized additional musicians were needed to bring the songs to their full potential. He recruited keyboardist Cubbie Fink and drummer Mark Pontius in 2009, and Foster the People was born.

Blast chatted with Foster in April before a sold-out show at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. Though the excitement surrounding the group was starting to reach a tipping point at that time, the frontman seemed to be taking it all in stride.

BLAST: You’ve said that you were on a sort of hiatus from music before forming Foster the People. What prompted you to start the band?

MARK FOSTER: Well, I’d been in bands in the past and just had a couple bad experiences. It’s so much work. It’s so hard to find the right people to play with. And you know, musicians tend to be such unhealthy people in general. It’s really hard to find people that are dedicated and healthy and just have their act together. So I guess I was just kind of burned out on it. After the last band I was in, I was just like, screw this. I’m just going to be a solo artist for the rest of my life. I just don’t want to deal with this anymore. So I did that for a few years, and really just buried myself in the studio and taught myself how to produce, and just kept writing songs. And eventually I got to a point where I was like, man, I can’t play these songs alone. There’s way too much going on. I need to put something together. But I put an emphasis on, I really want to create this band around friends. I don’t want to just go out and, like, find someone that can play. Personality was the most important thing. And we all jell really well together.

BLAST: Does that relate to your name, this sense of fostering camaraderie?

MF: Yeah, yeah. You know, our first couple gigs were for charities. We did a thing for Tom’s Shoes … and then we did a thing for Venice Beach Homeless Youth. And we were kind of just talking about, like, you know, we want to play music, sure. But we also want to help people. And my last name’s Foster. There’s that aspect of it. I think just the charity and everything that we set our sights on, it just made sense.

BLAST: Is charity still a focus for the band?

MF: Yeah. We’re just trying to figure out how to do it. You can be bleeding heart over so many different issues, but finding something that really means something to you that you kind of focus on … we’re still kind of figuring that out.

BLAST: How did you all connect and start playing music together?

MF: I met Mark (Pontius) just through a mutual friend of mine, and just really liked the way that he played. We were buddies and we just messed around. Every couple of weeks, we’d just jam. We were kind of working on this avant-electro two-man, like, weird performance art piece together. I always kind of had in the back of my mind, if I ever start a band again, I want to call this dude. (Cubbie and I) were just friends. We didn’t really play together, but we’d hang out. I didn’t even know he played bass and then (when I) saw him play, I was like, oh, that’s got a good feel. So I just kind of brought them together.

BLAST: Who are your musical influences, personally and as a band?

MF: The Beach Boys was the first band that I heard as a little kid that nobody showed me, that I gravitated towards and fell in love with. And that was a monumental moment in my musical life. Growing up, Nirvana played a big role. I started learning how to play guitar the week I heard Nirvana for the first time. And then later, New Order and The Clash. Aphex Twin early on was a pretty big influence (for Foster the People). And Motown. So just kind of pulling from a lot of different genres. That’s how I write songs.

Mark (Pontius) is just a really good pocket drummer. He understands dance music really well, but he also really understands soul and is just a very soulful drummer. And Cubbie’s background is pretty diverse too. When I met him, he was playing in, like, a country band. Pretty roots-y. But again, he’s just got a lot of soul. And he’s a multi-instrumentalist as well, so during our show he’s playing keys, and he plays bass. When we do acoustic sessions, he’ll bring his acoustic guitar and play guitar with me. It’s just nice to have a couple different tools in your toolkit.

BLAST: When did you actually know that you wanted to pursue music as a career, and were your parents supportive when you decided to move out to LA?

MF: Music was always very natural to me, and I always loved it and I always excelled in it. I sang for the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Choir when I was a kid, and that was a pretty big thing, and just a big indicator of like, oh wow, there’s something here. But I always had this preconceived notion that musicians were losers. As a little kid, I remember just thinking that. Every time I’d walk into a music shop, I’d see, like, some washed-up musician shredding on his guitar, all greasy. And it always freaked me out. As a little kid, that’s what I associated with pursuing music. So I never thought about it seriously. I wanted to be, like, an attorney or something.

And then I was like 17 years old and all my friends were applying for colleges. And I had a terrible GPA and didn’t want to go to college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I was just kind of freaking out about it. I mean, I was looking at the military. I was so close to joining the Air Force. I was just looking at all my options. And I was like, man, what am I going to do?, in turmoil about it.

I had that conversation with my dad one morning. He was like, “Why don’t you move out to LA or New York and pursue music, just give it a shot? If it doesn’t work out … after a year you’ll know where you sit. You’ll know whether you’ll be able to make a career out of it. And if it’s not something that you want to do, you’ll still be young enough to do something else.” And the second he said that, it was literally like he opened my mind up to something that I’d never even considered or thought was possible. I was 18 when I moved out to LA (in 2002).

BLAST: That’s great. It’s usually the opposite, with kids trying to convince their parents it’s a good idea to move to LA.

MF: I mean, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. That was the moment in my life where I realized that this is what I’m meant for. And it was so weird that it just took, like, one word to free that thought and put that into motion. Just that little bit of encouragement showed me, this is exactly what I’ve been created to do. Whereas before, it was completely hidden from me. It was just something that I enjoyed.

BLAST: So how did you spend the time between 2002 and forming Foster the People in 2009?

MF: Just growing up. (Laughs). It’s like, you leave your parents’ house and you realize, oh, food doesn’t just appear in the fridge. Your laundry. Just all the little things. I pretty much couch-surfed for the first two years. I was a vagabond in LA. I lived in so many places, just met so many people. Brought my acoustic guitar with me everywhere I went, and would go to parties and show up and start playing. Just meeting people and having crazy experiences and just kind of growing up. And then it got to a point where it was like, all right, I need to get serious about this if I’m ever going to make something of this. I can’t just fuck around and think that it’s just going to happen on its own. And so, I started to just really, really buckle down and started writing songs, and just really working at it. I eventually got a computer and a little studio set up and started teaching myself how to produce music. I started playing piano again after not playing since I was a little kid. I kind of re-taught myself how to play piano and started making more electronic music. And that was sort of the genus of where this started.

BLAST: How are you dealing with the sort of explosive fame after SXSW? Were you prepared for that at all?

MF: I don’t know. It’s kind of a blur. What’s so funny is that it’s like we’re in a glass bubble. You know what I mean? It’s like we’re in a glass bubble and it takes shape in the form of a 15-passenger van. And so, that’s our universe. Our universe is just, we’re always together and we’re driving around playing show after show, from city to city. It’s so busy. All that stuff is happening and yeah, it’s exciting. But I don’t think when you’re inside of something like this you really have any perspective on where you actually sit or what the perception of you is.

I just watched the Blur documentary (“No Distance Left to Run.”) It was a really, really good documentary. They were talking about when they were a band, starting out and starting to blow up, that they just had no idea. And I just related to that so much, because it’s like, you don’t have any idea of really what’s going on around you. We know that our shows are selling out, and we know that people are excited. But I think at the end of it, we kind of just have our sights set right in front of us. Like, how are we going to go out there and play a great show tonight? Just keeping it simple.

BLAST: Have you seen the dog skateboarding video set to your song “Helena Beat”?

MF: Yes! I love that. It’s so great. It’s become super viral. It’s just cool when people get inspired and do something. That’s the great thing about YouTube, or just about the age that we live in. Everybody has a video camera. Everybody has an idea. And everybody in their own right is a star, whether it’s a four-year-old kid that’s dancing in the kitchen or whatever. It’s like, anything can strike that human chord, and just become viral. That video’s awesome.

BLAST: You mentioned your solo material and your avant-garde project with Mark. Are there any traces of those projects in Foster the People songs?

MF: Oh, definitely. Yeah, I definitely developed a style. Even when I was doing my folk stuff on acoustic guitar, I learned the fundamentals of songwriting. And the way that I look at songwriting for this project now, it’s like, there are electronic influences, but at its bones, it’s very classic songwriting. I’m not, like, trying to reinvent the wheel with the songwriting. You could break it down to a piano and it’ll sound like a good song, just stripped down. It’s pretty classic songwriting that’s done in a way that’s more modern.

BLAST: The songwriting may be a common thread, but the range of influences that can be heard on the record is kind of astounding.

MF: That’s kind of what we set out to do. I’ve watched people try to pigeonhole us in this or that, and I think all of those labels are going to be shattered when the record comes out. I never want to be painted into a corner. I hate boundaries. I would hate to make everything sound the same. This record’s really versatile, and it gives us the perfect opportunity to do whatever we want on the second record. And I think people that are fans of something that’s different … they don’t wake up in the morning and have their same, like, turkey bagel for the last 15 years … those people are going to just be excited and want to follow us on the journey that we’re on.

Earlier this week, co-ed duo The Rentals released “Resilience,” a record to benefit the ongoing tsunami relief efforts in Japan. The aptly-named album was inspired by Japanese author Haruki Murakami and features 18 instrumental tracks composed and performed by members Matt Sharp and Lauren Chipman. The pair’s gorgeous orchestral arrangements feature Thomas Newman-esque piano twinkles and strings that quietly shift from melancholy to hopeful. The record includes guest appearances by artists including Emilie Simon and The Strokes’ Nikolai Fraiture.

Check out the short film that accompanies the track “February Three” here.

The album was originally recorded as part of “Songs About Time,” an artistic endeavor that brought together artists from around the globe for 365 consecutive days to create a finished project that incorporated photography, film and music.

“Resilience” is available in digital form, as well as on CD and vinyl. All profits from album sales will go to the American Red Cross relief efforts in Japan.

For more information, visit www.therentals.com.

“Walls,” the latest album from Australian duo An Horse, makes it clear that vocalist/guitarist Kate Cooper and drummer Damon Cox have truly perfected their chemistry on their sophomore offering.

Musically, the album feels like the pair slowed down and stepped back a bit when crafting the songs this time around. Whereas their first album, 2009’s “Rearrange Beds,” was a virtual onslaught of distorted guitars and heavy drums — and a wonderful one, to be sure — the songs here are less intuitive, feel more thoughtfully paced and structured, and take longer to build to a climax (efficiently, too; none crack the four-minute mark). Standouts like the stellar title track and the perfectly harmonized “Know This, We’ve Noticed” are perfect examples of this slow burn approach. And even on the record’s more hard-hitting tracks (“Leave Me,” “Trains and Tracks,” and first single and leadoff track “Dressed Sharply”), the vocal melodies manage to restrain and frequently outshine the instrumentation.

Cooper continues to wear her heart on her sleeve throughout “Walls,” sounding endearingly vulnerable as always when singing her uber-confessional, often insecure, lyrics. But these aren’t your typical superficial torch songs; the sentiments she poetically expresses in them often expose a deeper longing. “Tonight, I’m thinkin’ of someone else / Which, in a roundabout way, means I’ve thought about you all day,” she admits on “100 Whales.”

Written mostly during a tumultuous two-month period during which Cooper relocated to Montreal during a break from touring behind “Rearrange Beds,” the album contains several references to being away from loved ones. The song “Brain on a Table” resulted from Cooper finding out her mother had to have major surgery in Australia while An Horse was on tour halfway around the globe. “My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when they told me yours might stop,” she sings over tense start-and-stop rhythms.

Whether or not the guiding hand of producer Howard Redekopp (who has worked with the likes of Tegan and Sara and The New Pornographers, and mixed “Rearrange Beds”) is behind their musical evolution, “Walls” finds Cooper and Cox stretching themselves in terms of songwriting, venturing into territory that might not be the most comfortable for them.

It ends up fitting like a glove.

New Zealand isn’t exactly known as a breeding ground for indie bands — or, let’s face it, any bands for that matter (insert “Lord of the Rings” joke here) — but that might change if alt-electro quintet The Naked and Famous have anything to say about it.

Formed in 2008, shortly after guitarist Thom Powers and keyboardist Alisa Xayalith (who now share lead vocal and songwriting duties) met at music school, The Naked and Famous self-released a pair of EPs before being signed to Universal Records. The cheeky band name, borrowed from a Tricky lyric, hints at the confidence this group of 20-somethings has behind their music — and it’s not unjustified. After debuting at #1 in New Zealand last year, their debut full-length record, “Passive Me, Aggressive You,” was released in the U.S. in March, and it’s no exaggeration to say it is one of the best musical offerings of 2011 so far.

The album is full of deftly crafted electro-pop songs that, while dance-able, often pack quite an emotional punch upon closer listen. Shimmering keyboards and pounding drums propel along first single “Young Blood,” which has all the trappings of a radio-friendly classic. Hard-hitting songs like “All of This” and “Spank” are a nice complement to the sting of more charged anthems like “Eyes” and “Girls Like You.”

Hoping the popularity in their home country will translate overseas, The Naked and Famous are currently in the midst of their first major U.S. tour, sharing a bill with Foals and Freelance Whales. Powers recently chatted with Blast from the road, discussing the band’s influences, their handling of critical backlash from some Aukland naysayers, and the making of “Passive Me, Aggressive You.”

BLAST: Your band name is taken from a Tricky lyric. How did you decide on that?

THOM POWERS: When we were looking to play live and stuff like that was when we sort of had to name the band. We’d been together about a year. I was working in a record store at the time … processing CDs, all the secondhand stuff we traded in. And I was just kind of looking through album booklets at the lyrics. I’d always been a big fan of Tricky and I kind of like the idea of referencing other popular music. I just thought Tricky sort of had a lot to do with (us), not so much musically but the way he approached music. There’s heaps of female vocals on his tracks. It just seemed like all these kind of parallels. But the lyric itself just jumped out at me and I thought that was kind of interesting. It’s a funny name for a band.

BLAST: What role did music play in your life growing up? What was the first band you fell in love with?

TP: For pretty much all of us, we’ve just all been doing it since we were young. For me personally, I was always doing music. Since I was like 10 years old, I thought, I’m going to be in a band when I grow up. I didn’t really give myself any other options. The first band that I absolutely fell in love with and still listen to today is Tool. I got the album “Aenima” when I was a kid, and it’s just always been one of my favorite albums. With an introduction to music like that, I think that’s why we sort of have this idea of why albums are still important and each individual track is a crucial, key part of the record. (Our favorite bands) weren’t just, you know, like single bands. They were body of work bands.

BLAST: Who are your main influences?

TP: We’ve definitely got a lot of overlapping influences, but everyone has their own thing that they love more than someone else. I’d say (a band) that in the last couple of years has been a huge influence to me would be Frightened Rabbit. I’m a huge fan. It’s one of those bands that I still get, like, high school fanboy about. I walk down to the record store on the day of the release of the new album or something. Bjork is a huge influence for myself and Alisa. A lot of ’90s alternative stuff, like Portishead. That’s kind of what we grew up listening to. Most of us, we all kind of grew up with rock backgrounds. Aaron grew up being a huge Chemical Brothers fan. He sort of came from a DJ/house music background. That was his passion. (But) we do keep up quite regularly with current music. We’re always listening to new albums, and a lot of that gets fed into what we’re doing.

BLAST: Name three albums you would take to a desert island.

TP: Because I’ve listened to them for so long and I’m not sick of them, massive attack – “Mezzanine”; Tool, “Aenima”; Nine Inch Nails, “The Downward Spiral.”

BLAST: The album title “Passive Me, Aggressive You” is also a line in the song “All of This.” What does it mean and who came up with it?

TP: It was something that was a completely accidental afterthought. It kind of was a last resort, actually. I wanted to name the album something else, but then I was looking through the lyrics and just saw that, and thought that’s the perfect. In the song itself, it’s very much just about what “All of This” is kind of dealing with. But taken out of context, I think it’s obviously an interesting play on words, but it kind of sums up all the polarities that are on the album. There’s a lot of analog noises and digital noises. There’s the male and female vocals. There’s light songs, there’s dark songs. There’s just all these naturally appearing polarities and these dynamic shifts, and it just totally made sense.

BLAST: So you’re saying there’s an overall theme to the album?

TP: Definitely. When we finished writing … we had a lot of songs written, and a lot of demos. We kind of did a good old-fashioned classic sort of writing and cutting away scenario. I’d like to think that people see us as an album band. That’s very hard though these days, when there’s just so much oversaturation when it comes to music and music culture. You can get everything instantly. You don’t have to pay attention to it. You can listen to it once and move on to something else so quickly. Very much for us, the album is an album and I have real trouble picking a favorite track, because I think that, in order for people to kind of get the band and get what we’re about and understand where we’re coming from musically and emotionally and artistically, you have to listen to every song. There’s overlapping themes and emotional kind of charges. … But I feel like it’s an eclectic record, as far as our ideas of music.

BLAST: What is your songwriting process?

TP: Some songs come entirely from Alisa, and some songs come entirely from me. A lot of them, we meet in the middle somewhere. It’s quite a nice blend of sharing lyrics and songwriting and stuff. Generally, rule of thumb, myself and Alisa come up with a basic idea for a song and I’ll spend some time on the computer turning it into a demo for a band. And then I’ll pass that demo on to Aaron, and he and I will play around with it in the studio on the computers. Then, when we’ve got some solid direction and it feels like we’re excited about it, we’ll … hash it out and work out the practicalities of it in the rehearsal room.

BLAST: “Young Blood” has become a huge success and has the feel of a classic pop song. Can you offer any insight as to whether or not there’s formula to writing a hit song?

TP: It came quite naturally, but now that it’s done so well, I think I’m just going to mimic myself for a few more years. (Laughs). It was a complete accident, to be honest. It was the first song that we entered the studio with for the album. It was this big studio track we’d done and produced ourselves off the album, and it was, like, flawless and perfect. So, it was the most wonderful and exciting start for the record. We felt like it was a special song when we were writing it and we felt like, wow, this might do well on radio. This is brilliant, we’ve got a single. Because that process can always be very depressing when you’re writing an album. You sort of get to the end of it and then you go, ok, which songs are we going to write down as singles? That’s a horrible feeling sometimes, because it becomes this concern that you shouldn’t have to think about. You should just make music and if it’s a single, good. That’s wonderful.

I’m not sure about our ability to kind of churn out pop hits. I think this might be one of those instances — a lot of artists have them — where it’s just one of those magic kind of of the moment occurrences. I feel like every artist maybe gets one shot at having that huge thing, and also I think that has a lot to do with right place, right time. Sometimes a writer can just write something that is very of the now. And then it’s really difficult to do that again. Sometimes those things happen so naturally that you can’t force them, and you might just never get that moment again in your life. But saying that, we haven’t given up all hope. We’re writing for the next record as we speak.

BLAST: As you’re writing, do you feel any pressure for your sophomore album?

TP: (Our creativity) is still flowing, and we’re arrogant and don’t listen to anyone, so
no pressure for us. (Laughs). We’re completely confident. I’m just doing the thing that I did for the first album, which is a process where I’m not doing lots of intense writing. I’m just writing down each little idea and then playing around with noises and coming up with lots of basic small demos. And when we get some time to all settle down … we’ll start getting more serious on them. But there’s this kind of collection process, where the ideas just start building. Which was a big part of the (first) album as well. I was working a day job at a record store and was spending most of my time sneaking off and listening to music and writing down notes about good ideas. It’s a nice process to have, actually.

BLAST: Has your success been a bit of a blessing and a curse in New Zealand?

TP: Oh yes. That’s what (the song) “A Wolf in Geek’s Clothing” is about. You take it with a pinch of salt. I’m not trying to sound arrogant, but it’s the same thing with reviews as well. You can only take the good ones as seriously as the bad ones. Perception in general can be so influenced and altered. Back home, it’s funny, a lot of hipsters and idiots wouldn’t consider us an indie band, even though we were at the point of putting (the album) out on our own label. It’s very hard to take any of that sort of criticism seriously. The smarter your outlook on it, often the harsher the backlash. It’s just better to ignore it. Or to write good songs about them. (laughs).

The Naked and Famous play at the Paradise Monday night with Foals and Freelance Whales. For complete tour dates, visit www.thenakedandfamous.com.

NEW YORK — One of the most important life lessons Charlie Sheen says he’s learned is to either love or hate things, rather than wavering in the middle. That certainly seemed to be the case among the audience members in attendance at Radio City Music Hall Friday night for the first of two New York City stops on Sheen’s one-man tour, “My Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat is Not an Option.”

When the actor strolled onto the stage a little after 8:30, he was met with the type of fervent applause and hooting usually reserved for televangelists or stadium rock acts.

“This is radical,” said Sheen, clad in a New York Yankees shirt and matching hat, jeans and sneakers. By the time his … performance, for wont of a better word, concluded approximately 58 minutes later, to say the mood had changed would be an understatement.

Sheen’s “Violent Torpedo of Truth” came in the form of a sit-down interview (think “Inside the Actors Studio”) that primarily consisted of the star recounting stories about trashing hotel rooms and bedding prostitutes in various parts of the world, while the interviewer, a man about Sheen’s age who was never introduced by name, either egged him on or tried to keep his ramblings on track. (“In my world, a simple question usually has an epic answer,” Sheen noted.)

For the record, Sheen seemed completely sober, but a passing reference to his professed teetotaling was met with boos. (“An AA meeting this is not,” he responded wryly, shortly before lighting his first cigarette of the evening.)

Noting that he was not staying at the Plaza Hotel this time around (the site of his infamous binge in October 2010), Sheen offered his recollection of that night, which he said began with thousands of dollars worth of wine at the restaurant Daniel with the porn star/escort Capri Anderson.

“Next thing I know I’m naked (in my hotel room), taking Ambien and fighting the cops,” he said, explaining that the entire fracas was started when Anderson locked herself in the bathroom with his $173,000 watch. “Did I throw a chair at the door? Maybe. Here’s the shitty part — I never even fucked her. Winning? Not.”

At first, Sheen’s anecdotes were welcomed with catcalls and catchphrases (anyone playing a drinking game that involved shouts of “Winning!” from the peanut gallery would surely have blacked out early on.) But after about 20 minutes, as the interviewer tried to veer towards serious questions about Sheen’s film career, the crowd’s enthusiasm took a turn as well, culminating in repeated shouts of “Boring!!”

Sheen visibly grew increasingly irritated, but managed to keep his cool. “I thought when I spoke, everyone else would listen,” he said after a particularly enthusiastic round of boos. (He has a point. It makes one wonder what exactly attendees, many of whom shelled out more than $100 for tickets, were hoping for.)

The whole thing was not unlike that awkward, cringe-y feeling one gets when listening to an older relative or acquaintance reminisce about his riotous “glory days,” thinking his exploits are impressive, when they’re really just sort of pathetic. “This is a really good story, trust me,” the interviewer told attendees more than once — a little desperately, it seemed.

Sheen’s two girlfriends, a.k.a. his “Goddesses,” also made a brief cameo onstage. The term “goddess,” the audience learned, was actually coined by actor Nicolas Cage in 1990 when, according to Sheen, he and Cage were met with federal agents after they repeatedly cracked jokes over the PA system on a flight to San Francisco. Though Sheen was carrying an ounce of cocaine at the time, the two actors walked out of the airport unscathed. (“All the federal agents were ‘Platoon’ fans,” Sheen explained. “They were also fans of ‘Raising Arizona.’”) As they were leaving, Sheen said, Cage turned to him and said, “How about that blonde stewardess? She was a fucking goddess.”

Sheen also name-checked his half-brother, Emilio Estevez, and their father, Martin Sheen. Freud would have had a field day with the comments about the elder Sheen.

“How ‘bout my dad?” Sheen said, seemingly without sarcasm. “He’s fuckin’ gnarly. He’s still the fuckin’ coolest guy on the planet.”

It was his father, Sheen said, who made him want to get into show business in the first place. Not be a serious actor, mind you — merely to be famous and take advantage of all the trappings that came with it.

“He always had cash in his pockets and he was always surrounded by hot chicks,” Sheen recalled.

And the “tiger blood” Sheen claims to possess? Apparently derived from a scene in “Apocalypse Now,” where Martin Sheen’s character has a run-in with a tiger while searching for mangoes.

Towards the end of the show, a video was played that mocked Sheen’s pull quote-spawning “20/20” interview and concluded with a sequence of Sheen and three friends romping around and playing air guitar to REO Speedwagon’s “Take It On the Run.” It was met with tepid laughter from the audience.

The loudest applause of the night came when Sheen expressed his desire to return to his sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” from which he said he was fired for merely “having too much fun.”

“What did they expect when they gave me all this cash?” he wondered. (Again, coming from a known drug and alcohol abuser who was earning about $2 million per episode, he’s not entirely off-base.)

Sheen issued a public invitation for writer Chuck Lorre to join him onstage during his second performance, on Sunday, so the two could hash out their (very publicly aired) differences and bring the show out of its current limbo.

For his final “act,” Sheen rattled off his bucket list, which included feats like hitting a home run in Yankee Stadium, jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge wearing a parachute (“Not opening it, just wearing it. I’ll live.”), adopting Nick Nolte as his son and killing the shark from “Jaws.” And lastly, in what was clearly a rehearsed line, Sheen said he wanted to “play Radio City on a Friday night. (pause) Oh wait, I just did. Good night!”

I’m willing to speculate that when Sheen practiced that line in his head, it was probably met with thunderous applause. But in reality, boos drowned out the clapping as he exited the stage and the house lights came on with a promptness that likely broke the existing record. Cries of “You suck!” and “You’re a joke!” rained down from the balcony.

Though the first night of Sheen’s tour, in Detroit last weekend, was a certifiable bomb, the negative response from Friday’s crowd had to have been especially irksome for the New York City native. Sheen’s delusional sense of ego and self-aggrandizement will come in handy for the remainder of the tour, if Friday night was a harbinger of his future appearances. He may believe that he’s still “winning,” but it’s quickly becoming apparent that most people have lost interest in the game.

The top 10 “Sheen-ius” quotes from Charlie’s Radio City show:

10. “I got Weinstein-ed twice. Those fucking guys are warlocks.” (In reference to “The Three Musketeers” and “Scary Movie 4.”)

9. Recalling an encounter with a prostitute in Hong Kong: “We started smoking cocoa puffs. That’s kindergarten for crack.”

8. On a prostitute he met with Estevez on a visit to Mexico, who was eight months pregnant and had Caesarian scars: “Did I fuck her? Well, yeah. Was I awesome? You betcha.”

7. “I always confuse marriage vows with the Miranda Rights.”

6. On “Wall Street”: “I didn’t understand the language. I might as well have been speaking Aramaic.”

5. “I haven’t had a speeding ticket since 1985. I haven’t driven since ’84.”

4. On filming “Platoon”: “I had diarrhea the whole time. I had Vietnam coming out of my ass.”

3. “Anyone see ‘Wall Street 2’? Was I in that movie?”

2. From one of his hotel stories: “I performed CPR on a supermodel in a heroin coma. She was in the coma, not me.”

1. On his sobriety: “Sober Valley Lodge: Population, one. Success rate, perfect.”

It’s been a roundabout path leading up to and culminating in “Telepathic,” the latest album from indie duo L’Altra, which was released this week. Since forming the band in 1999 in Chicago, and releasing an impressive catalog of material, Lindsay Anderson and Joseph Desler Costa have gone through a breakup (from each other), dealt with numerous lineup changes, and explored solo careers, before deciding to reunite and record the moody, brooding songs that would become “Telepathic.”

The clearly irrevocable bond between Desler Costa and Anderson extends past their bio and infiltrates their music as well. The two share vocal duties, and their past anguish rears its head in songs like “When the Ship Sinks” and first single “Nothing Can Tear It Apart.” Desler Costa recently offered his thoughts on the record and the difficulties in bringing it to fruition.

BLAST: Did music play a big part in your life growing up?

JOSEPH DESLER COSTA: It’s the thing that is always there for me. I wake up with it, go to bed with it, ride the subway with it. I got my first electric guitar when I was 15 years old for Christmas. It’s been an obsession (ever) since.

BLAST: Who are your major musical influences?

JDC: I was hugely influenced (through) my older brother’s New Wave tastes. I was very young but fell in love with The Cure, Love and Rockets, New Order. I think that romantic New Wave feel stayed with me. Lindsay grew up in a musical family and (sang) in choirs. She also studied classical piano. I think that’s been a huge influence on her.

BLAST: How did you meet and when/how did you begin writing music together?

JDC: Lindsay and I met on the first day of college. We have been friends and close for so long. We used to talk and listen to music constantly and it was a natural progression to start playing together. It kind of just happened on its own with no real effort. The effort came later in continuing to play music together, as it’s not always easy.

BLAST: Where did the name “L’Altra” come from?

JDC: It means “the other woman” in Italian and a number of other romance languages. It just fit our concept and I like having an apostrophe in our name.

BLAST: What are the pros and cons of being in a personal and professional relationship with someone simultaneously?

JDC: The pros are that you can say anything without filter and that you know this person completely. The cons are that you can say anything without filter and that you know this person completely.

BLAST: What made you decide to continue working together and make this record after your breakup?

JDC: We were both writing songs again and after making solo records I think we missed working together. I would think of her piano parts in songs I was working on. There was a lack in the music, so we then decided to give it a try and started working on some songs together. It all came back easily and I think the time off helped us to appreciate what each other brings to the table creatively. We also learned that it is important to have some filter when you collaborate with someone. There is a critical distance that you find. Too close is too close and too far won’t work either. We found an equilibrium.

BLAST: Is songwriting a cathartic process for you? While you were making this record, did any issues surface through the lyrics that maybe you hadn’t discussed previously?

JDC: It can be for sure, but its not like we write because we need to get something off our chests or anything. It’s just this way of communicating more abstract things and feelings. I am not ever exactly sure what a song we write is about. We focus more on creating a feel or a place, and then hope the listener finds something they can relate to inside it. As far as lyrics go, we always fight over them, and try to edit each other. That’s the only issue. I’m not sure we’ll ever work that problem out. Maybe it’s our way of working.

BLAST: Overall, “Telepathic” is very atmospheric. What type of vibe were you trying to achieve in the recording process? Would you say there’s a unifying theme to the songs?

JDC: The music we make is very intimate and we tried very hard to preserve the intimacy in the recording. It’s music written in our living rooms. We wanted the vocals to sound close, like someone whispering in your ear. We also wanted to leave a naturalness in the recording, like the creak of a drum pedal or piano keys. I think making a too perfect recording takes away the intimacy we were looking towards. Our goal is to make an “album” — by that I mean an unified group of songs that sound best when listen to together. Maybe the album is a dying format, but for us it’s essential. So yeah, I think there is a thread that runs through them all.

BLAST: What are the three albums you would take to a desert island with you?

JDC: Radiohead, “OK Computer”; The Cure, “Disintegration”; Beach House, “Teen Dream”

L’Altra’s “Telepathic” was released Tuesday. It can be purchased on iTunes.

“When we dance, we want the music loud,” singer Maja Ivarsson belts on “Dance With the Devil,” the irresistible, anthemic second track on “Something to Die For,” the latest album from Swedish quintet The Sounds. She isn’t kidding. As the song’s marching band-esque intro gives way to a background siren effect, it’s clear the band is coming out in a fighting spirit.

“Something to Die For,” their fourth album and strongest to date, represents a true evolution in The Sounds’, well, sound. It’s also the group’s first self-produced album, written and recorded in their own studio in Sweden. From the opening notes of the pulsating first track, “It’s So Easy,” it’s clear that The Sounds set out to make a record of out-and-out dance jams, incorporating more house and techno influences than have been seen on previous efforts.

With the exception of tender album closer “Wish You Were Here” (not a Pink Floyd cover), the songs are loud and fast – the perfect soundtrack to a sweaty night on the dance floor. “Won’t Let Them Tear Us Apart” pays homage to ‘80s shlock, and songs like “The No No Song” and its titular counterpart “Yeah Yeah Yeah” prove the band can still write singalong hooks like nobody’s business. Overall, it’s a nonstop party.

Throughout the album, Ivarsson’s voice is deeper and edgier than it typically is (at a recent show in Brooklyn, she came on stage defiantly smoking a cigarette, which may play a role in that), and even when she’s sounding vulnerable on tracks like “Diana” and first single “Better Off Dead,” there’s a certain attitude behind her delivery. The second line she utters, “You gotta seize the moment before it’s gone,” encapsulates the soul of the entire record. Ironically, “Something to Die For” is The Sounds’ most life-affirming record to date.

A lot has changed for the members of Eisley — the quintet from Tyler, Texas that consists of four siblings and their cousin – in the period between their last album, 2007’s “Combinations,” and their new record, “The Valley,” which is available in the U.S. today.

The latest offering is a quintessential breakup record whose title is indicative of the emotional lows the three DuPree sisters (who share leading roles in the band) experienced in the intervening years. Lead singer/guitarist Sherri went through a very public divorce from New Found Glory’s Chad Gilbert after an eight-month marriage in 2007; guitarist Chauntelle had a broken engagement; and keyboardist Stacy also ended a relationship. (Their brother, drummer Weston DuPree, and cousin, bassist Garron DuPree, seem to be just along for the ride here.) The band also split with its longtime label, Warner Bros., last year.

Though the sisterly trio are all now happily married to other people, it’s evident most of the material was written in the immediate wake of their respective breakups. With song titles like “Sad,” “Watch It Die” and “I Wish,” “The Valley” never strays far lyrically from the themes of pain and heartbreak. Tracks like the “Grey’s Anatomy”-ready power ballad “Ambulance,” penned by Stacy, showcase the raw hurt of a recent loss.

But “The Valley” isn’t entirely a pity party. “Smarter” is particularly bitter, with Sherri (who is now married to Say Anything singer Max Bemis) crooning over angry guitars, “If you want to blame me, then go on / I’m smiling now ‘cause I’m smarter than you think.”

Longtime Eisley fans will be pleased to hear that the sisters’ harmonies are as strong as ever. But musically, the album packs less of a punch than “Combinations.” More piano- and string-driven than the previous record, some of the songs feel a bit restrained and even stunted at times. Exceptions are the aforementioned “Ambulance,” the dark, structurally evolved standout “Better Love” and the propulsive title track.

The DuPree sisters aren’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to lovesickness — the lyrics allude to common themes like infidelity and miscommunication — but, though it’s not Eisley’s strongest effort to date, the confessional honesty on “The Valley” expose a level of vulnerability previously unseen in the band’s songwriting.

Australian quartet The Jezabels’ inaugural gig together was in 2007 at a talent competition at Sydney University, where they were all students. They came in second place out of dozens of acts — and it’s pretty much been all uphill for the group ever since.

With a trilogy of EPs under its belt, and radio success in Australia, the band has toured with the likes of Tegan & Sara, and is gearing up for a small U.S. spring tour that includes a stop in Austin, Texas for the SXSW festival. They’re currently writing and recording new material, and plan to continue doing so through June. The goal is to have a full-length album ready for release in the fall.

The Jezabels’ songs are a perfect blend of signature building blocks — heavy on percussion (see: “Hurt Me,” “The Man is Dead”), densely layered and featuring intricate piano arrangements, all buoying singer Hayley Mary’s hummable, even hook-ish, singing. “Dark Storm” — their most recent EP and strongest to date — is the perfect culmination of the trio. The title track is nothing short of infectious; the moody, pensive “Sahara Mahala” allows Mary to show off her impressive pipes, and the jittery opening guitar notes on “A Little Piece” are shiver-inducing.

A mere glance at The Jezabels’ limited catalog will indicate that gender roles play a significant theme in their music — titles include “Old Little Girls,” “The Man is Dead” and “She’s So Hard,” and one song includes the line, “He was never meant to be a boy.” But upon closer examination, it’s apparent that everything about the band’s aesthetic has some sort of theoretical reasoning behind it, including the very concept of an EP trilogy and the decision to name each of the first two releases after a song that would be on the next one. Call it the thinking man’s (or woman’s?) indie.

It’s early evening on a Friday when Mary and I connect over Skype, meaning that it’s 10am on Saturday for her in Australia. But though The Jezabels deal with serious themes in their music, it’s clear they don’t take themselves too seriously. (For the record, Mary might be the only 23-year-old alive who can talk at length about anthropomorphizing feminism and not have it sound pretentious in the slightest.) Over the better part of an hour, the singer eloquently dishes on feminine icons from Virginia Woolf to Lady Gaga, the thematic concepts of each of the band’s releases, and how the band members manage to merge their diverse musical tastes.

(Responses have been edited for length.)

BLAST: How did you all meet and form the band?

HAYLEY MARY: I guess it starts with me and (keyboardist) Heather (Shannon). We went to primary school and high school together and we sort of played a bit of folky stuff. We grew up in Byron Bay, which is on the north coast of New South Wales, and we came to Sydney to go to uni and ended up still wanting to be in a band. So we met a couple of guys, Sam (Lockwood), the guitarist, and (drummer Nik Kaloper), at uni.

BLAST: Do you all have similar tastes in music?

HM: No, the opposite. We have very different music tastes, actually. Heather is a classical pianist. She did a degree in piano at the Sydney Conservatory. So she’s probably the least literate in pop and rock but the most literate in classical and jazz and every other type of music, and the theory of music. Nick is very into sort of technical drumming and thrash, and heavy music in a lot of ways, mainly because he likes the focus of the drums in music. And Sam has more of a pop sensibility, like I do, but he also likes a bit of country and folk, like Gillian Welch, that kind of stuff. And bluegrass. And I’m just really into pop, I suppose. I thought I was a pop purist, and I really like the ‘80s and that kind of stuff, which really went against everyone else’s taste in a lot of ways. I just like the general, you know, epicness of the ‘80s. Prince, Cyndi Lauper, David Bowie, Queen, Kate Bush. Bruce Springsteen’s awesome.

BLAST: Is it difficult to harness those varying tastes and form a cohesive sound?

HM: Our first EP (“The Man is Dead”) sort of seemed like we didn’t know each other, and it was kind of a war of the different elements. It was very sort of inconsistent in itself, and it’s quite naïve. But the more we write together, the more we realize where us as individuals have to compromise, and where we’re strong. Like, I really find that I like to dictate melody, but sometimes I’ll have to sort of sit back and say ok, because someone else’s feelings are stronger. We just find a way of compromising. And that’s when our best songs are written, I suppose.

We come from really different areas, and the best songs are when we manage to get a balance between those. We’ve changed each other’s tastes a lot, but that was where we started out. I mean, I’m still the only one to say I like Lady Gaga. The rest of them sort of are like, whoa, about that kind of stuff. I think she’s a genius, whereas the other ones don’t quite see where I’m coming from.

BLAST: Is there an artist that you all agree on?

HM: The National might be the only band we all like. I really relate to (singer Matt Berninger). I can’t quite work him out, but you know how he’s very aware of being the American man, like the white American man? I feel like that is the kind of person that we’re talking about when we say “The Man is Dead.” I’ve always related to him on that level, because he seems really sad and self-aware of his very privileged position.

BLAST: How did you come up with the band name?

HM: That was a childhood sort of thing for me. My dad always wanted to call me Jezabel, and it didn’t work out. My dad was a bit of an eccentric and we used to go busking and call ourselves the Jezabels. (When we formed the band) it just started to stick and made sense. It was hard at first to convince people. I think it’s cool in a really dorky way, but I like that.

BLAST: Why did you decide to release three EPs instead of a full-length album?

HM: We went with the EP thing for a few reasons. It started out as, we were just too scared to do an album. Not too scared, but we didn’t really feel prepared to do an album after the first EP. Because we were independent, a lot of the kind of financial side of it affected that decision. EPs are cheaper, and they’re cheaper to buy, and they’re shorter in the time they take up (to record). So it made sense. But we also thought that the idea of a trilogy kind of suited our sort of themes, I guess. Like our melodramatic bit, sort of pseudo-epic kind of music, I suppose. It has a bit of a “Star Wars”-esque vibe to it. We thought trilogy, perfect. It’s all over the top. Why not just be really over the top, and we’ll have a kind of coherent aesthetic throughout all the EPs? It’s all a bit conceited and stuff, but it’s kind of fun.

And I think we’ve really kind of established ourselves, at least in Australia. Because now we’ve worked out how we write, what we are in people’s minds on the musical landscape, at least in this country. And we’ve kind of just really honed our … I’m going to say art, for wont of a better word … before our debut album. We’re all very strange and sometimes shaky, sort of emotional individuals. So we feel a lot more comfortable with the platform of having three EPs under our belt.

BLAST: The songs on the first EP, “The Man is Dead,” are much more upbeat than the ones on “Dark Storm.” The single “Disco Biscuit Love,” in particular, is about club culture. The song’s central character is “with the meanest boy in the hills” who “only loves (her) when he’s on pills.” Can you talk about that a bit?

HM: From my perspective personally, the first EP was more satirical of that culture, of partying culture. A lot of people took (“Disco Biscuit Love”) as, like, embracing drug and club culture, because it was about that. But if you listened at all in detail, it was very not about that. It was a critique of that, and it was kind of a romantic critique of that, I suppose. And that was sort of a coming to Sydney thing. Those were the observations I made, coming to Sydney and seeing that culture. I was very naive and new to it, but it made me sad. We never went into it trying to make a party album. It was always meant to be with an undercurrent of commentary or questioning or sadness about the whole situation.

BLAST: How would you describe the thematic evolution, if there is one, throughout the three EPs?

HM: I think it’s an evolution, but I kind of think that everything that people are seeing now was there in the first EP. I think we got better at articulating that more critical, I guess more socially aware (aspect). There’s definitely a difference, sort of like we exaggerated certain elements that were always there, but we just took them and exaggerated them, like the tragedy side of it, in “Dark Storm.” We became more self-aware by the people we worked with and what people said they got from it. And I know I personally lyrically decided to be kind of conscious and reflected on what the themes were in “The Man is Dead,” to write “She’s So Hard” and to write “Dark Storm,” to really kind of think about what I’m talking about, about females especially, and their own role in their oppression and this kind of stuff. And I started getting really theoretical about it, so I think it just kind of got a bit darker and a bit more self-aware as we went on, and that’s probably why it’s kind of boppy at the start and then it gets really kind of heavy. Because we were just delving into it.

BLAST: You generally write all the lyrics, but do the full songs come together in a collective songwriting process?

HM: We have a very slow writing process, generally. It’s very democratic. It’s a bit different for every song. It started out, the songs were (written mostly by) me and then they’d add their instruments to it. But then it quickly evolved into a kind of conversation between parts. Depending on who comes up with something first, we kind of shape it around that, whether it’s a drumbeat or a riff or something. I tend to write (the lyrics) in gibberish first with the melody. I feel like it has to have the right sounds. But then of course I’ve got to kind of meld in the sort of message that I want as well, so it’s kind of a long process. It takes me a while.

BLAST: Your lyrics are very confessional and sometimes heartbreaking, particularly on the “Dark Storm” EP. Where does your inspiration comes from?

HM: I’ve written songs with different types of people, or lots of people that I know, or attitudes I have towards people in mind. It’s kind of more fractured than just having one person in mind. I think I’ve probably only written one song with one particular person in mind. But most of the time it’s fictional, I’ve got to say. I think I manage to kind of hide a bit in kind of some fantastical world, which is a protective thing for me. Because you don’t want it to be about you, otherwise you feel too vulnerable.

BLAST: Your vocal range is one of the most striking things about The Jezabels’ overall sound. What’s your singing background?

HM: I always sang a lot. You couldn’t really shut me up. My mum actually, when I visited her recently, gave me this picture that I’d drawn that was a business card. I was about four. It was a picture of me, and it had my address and my phone number, and it said, “Singer. If you want a singer, call this number” or something. It’s really funny. I didn’t realize that I’d wanted to be a singer for that long until I saw that. My dad was always very musical, so he’d always try and make me sing on the table when we went to parties and that kind of stuff, which was a bit embarrassing at the time. But then, when I started actually singing in a band, I actually hurt my voice a bit. I started getting laryngitis a lot. I often write songs that I can’t sing or aren’t within my range, and I push it so that I can sing it. So I had to get some vocal training to prevent that from happening. And now I can safely say I can sing everything on (the records) I think, without doing too much damage. Hopefully.

BLAST: You worked with the same producer and cover designer on all three EPs. “The Man is Dead” features a figure in an mask and the image on the “Dark Storm” EP is of a woman wading into the water. Is that a reference to a suicide mission?

HM: Virginia Woolf died that way, and I was really affected by (her) imagery in her understanding of the water. She likened it to an illness. Like, she said that being ill was like being out at sea, and you’re kind of looking at the land, wanting to come back in. And eventually she just succumbed, if that’s the word, to her illness and walked out into the water and died. And I think that that’s become a really huge kind of analogy for the feminine, and giving into your illness or your “histrionic ways” and everything.

Chris Doyle is the designer of the covers. And he came up with that first image for “The Man Is Dead.” He knew there was an awareness of feminism in our band. Not necessarily pro-feminist, but just we really (explore) that kind of, is feminism a good thing? Yes and no. That debate, and all its various forms. That kind of colors the themes. And for him to come up with that image really kind of consolidated that.  These feminine flowers on an executioner’s mask across a man, who looks like the epitome of traditional masculine sort of patriarchy. We were like, wow. Yeah, that kind of image is us in a nutshell, and it kind of shaped us from there on.

BLAST: That’s really interesting. Can you elaborate on the role feminism plays in your music?

HM: I studied a little bit of gender studies towards the end of my arts degree, and I really got interested in the stigma of feminism, and how people are kind of like, oh, get over it, and it’s just sort of a bad word. And to be a feminist is, you know, passe and negative and naive, and all that kind of stuff. And I wanted to somehow be a femme band but be aware of that at the same time, and I think my lyrics are just a process of me trying to do that. Whether I succeed or not is questionable, because most people don’t get it. With (the song) “Mace Spray,” for example (whose chorus includes the line, “She loves me / More than anyone who wouldn’t lay a hand”), it’s kind of about feminism, the “she” in it. And her as a sort of fairly fickle master, and having trouble with her because she wants to liberate you and she means so many good things to you as a woman, or as a girl. But at the same time, she makes you really scared and she makes you have a lot of anger. And trying to sort of be a modern feminist, or a contemporary feminist, or someone who doesn’t have to hate men and all the negatives of feminism. I suppose, for me, it’s an attempt to try and put feminism in your face, whilst transcending or even satirizing that attitude that it’s a negative thing. But also, I’m torn. Like, it sometimes is a bad thing for me. It makes you angry. It’s basically my ongoing struggle with feminism.

The Jezabels play at T.T. the Bear’s on March 14. For a full list of tour dates, visit thejezabels.com.

At just 23, Lauren Pritchard has a resume that many performers twice her age would envy. While trying to get her music career off the ground as a teenager, she landed a role in the original cast of the (eventual Tony Award-winning) Broadway show “Spring Awakening.” Now, five years later, the singer/songwriter is preparing a cross-country tour in support of her debut album, “Wasted in Jackson,” which was released in the U.S. this week.

Pritchard has found a happy middle ground for her two passions, in more ways than one. In person, she has the poised demeanor of someone with a theater background, but the nonchalance and occasional irreverence of a musician. Munching on a salad and barbecue potato chips at the Universal Records office in New York City recently, Pritchard chatted with Blast about the path that brought her to this point.

The title “Wasted in Jackson” is a nod to Pritchard’s birthplace — Jackson, Tenn. (During our interview, she repeatedly mentioned growing up in the “Bible Belt.”) Raised by parents whose musical interests include Al Green, Steely Dan, The Who, Prince and Foreigner, Pritchard recalls first falling in love with music while listening to “Best of the ‘70s” compilations during family road trips.

“That’s what kind of started the singer/songwriter thing for me,” says Pritchard, who now calls London home. “I was 10, 11ish … when I found people like Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. … I was listening to music that was really honest, people really talking about what they wanted to say.”

Though she started piano lessons at the age of seven and played in recitals starting at age nine (“which I hated,” she adds. “I was absolutely terrified. I would, like, break out in a cold sweat minutes before”), Pritchard didn’t begin writing her own songs until age 14, when she bonded with other musically-inclined teens during a weekend youth group church retreat in Nashville.

“We sat around, just playing music and shooting the shit,” she said. “I went home after the weekend and wrote a song. … That was the first moment I ever had a real kind of jam session. And it made such an impact on me. … I already knew that was what I wanted to do, and that just sort of furthered that for me.”

Her parents, especially her mother, supported her passion (“not in a cheesy way,” she insists), and even allowed Pritchard to move to Los Angeles at 16 to live with her best friend’s family and pursue a musical career.

“I had very realistic parents,” she said matter-of-factly. “If they really thought that I couldn’t succeed, they would have told me to shut up and do something else. … You know, you see a show like ‘American Idol’ and you see these parents, ‘My child is the best singer in the whole world!’ … And you’re like, oh, what is wrong with you? My mother was never like that. … I had parents that were like, this is what you can do well, and this is what you should do. But it was never in a forceful way. It was something that I wanted to do. Basically, there was reassurance and moral support.”

Though California was a bit of a culture shock for the Tennessee transplant, (“I didn’t even know what the fuck Chanel was until I moved to L.A.”), she got an agent and began auditioning for commercials and bit parts to supplement her income, while at the same time performing as a backup singer/keyboardist in a reggae band. She found a network of supporters, not the least of which was her best friend’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley.

“A lot of the reason why I kept going is because I had people around me going, ‘It’s not going to be for nothing,’” Pritchard says. “When my mom left (to return to Nashville) … Lisa filled that gap for me. She was extremely supportive. … I owe so much to this woman. I wouldn’t have anything had she not let me live with her and had she not taken care of me. … She really believed in me.”

While finding her footing in L.A., a twist of fate led to what would be a life-changing resume builder.

As Pritchard tells it, “I went on an audition for this tiny little underground show called ‘Spring Awakening.’”

Singer Aly Spaltro, who goes by the stage name Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, may hail from Portland, Maine, but it’s Boston that has adopted the 21-year-old startup musician as a hometown darling.

Spaltro, who has self-released a handful of albums but is not signed to a label, was named Folk Act of the Year at the Boston Music Awards in December. She’s since found a cheerleader in Act of the Year winner and local icon Amanda Palmer, who Tweeted after the ceremony, “chick blew me away live. look up her stuff.”

Spaltro recently wrapped up a series of dates as the opening act for Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield, and will support Faces on Film at Berklee’s Café 939 Thursday night.

Those who catch one of her live performances will be able to pick up a copy of her latest offering, “Mammoth Swoon”(most of the other recordings are available through her website) — a mish-mash of bedroom and live versions of songs in demo form. It’s country and folk influences that come through most prominently on the collection, although she tiptoes into PJ Harvey territory on the best-produced track, “Between Two Trees.” Cuts like “Crane Your Neck,” the aching “Aubergine” and the 10-minute pairing “Up in the Rafters/Bird Balloons” (“songs of longing,” she describes them) showcase Spaltro’s gift for heartwrenching, pining torch songs and her passionate, often raspy singing style. An early interest in poetry is evident in her lyrics, which refuse to rely on tired, sentimental clichés. “Absence makes the heart grow hollow/Make me into an egg without yolk,” she sings on “Aubergine.”

While the album consists primarily of rough cuts, the underlying quality of the songs themselves is undeniable, and it should be enough to sate the ravenous appetite for Spaltro’s music fans are sure to walk away with after seeing one of her captivating live performances. Because it’s on stage that Spaltro really shines. During a show earlier this month at New York City’s tiny Rockwood Music Hall, armed with only a guitar and a small amplifier, the unassuming, diminutive brunette had the audience in the palm of her hand. Her songs took on a haunting quality in such an intimate setting, even as she offered disarmingly friendly banter between songs.

Spaltro recently chatted with Blast about her early exposure to music (some might consider it a predestined career choice when members of Creedence Clearwater Revival hold jam sessions in your childhood living room), plans for 2011, and origin of her stage moniker.

BLAST: Did music play a big part in your life growing up?

ALY SPALTRO: My dad is actually a really killer musician. He’s a lead guitarist (and) used to make his own CDs. He didn’t really give them to anyone besides his friends and family, but I remember him sort of sitting there layering all the instruments that a full band would have, and making his own songs. He was randomly friends with members of CCR. … Whenever they played the place that we lived, they would come over and, like, have a jam session with my dad … which I was just really curious about as a kid. I would sit in and listen. Also, my next door neighbor when I was five was this 13-year-old named Lacey, and she got me into The Beatles when I was in kindergarten. And I just fell in love. I was obsessed with The White Album and I used to just sit there for hours and listen to The Beatles and oldies on the radio.

BLAST: Who are some of your musical influences? Did you have a defining moment when you knew music was going to play a significant role in your future?

AS: The Beatles were my first influence. I was really into Diana Ross & the Supremes, and The Mamas & the Papas, and The Isley Brothers and stuff like that. And then what really kind of re-changed my life as I got older (was), when I was 14, I went to a record store when I had just moved to Maine, and I randomly bought Neutral Milk Hotel’s first record, because I really liked the album art. … I brought it home and it just floored me. At that point in time, it was exactly what I had been searching for. And it kind of felt like I had to search no more, like it was all right there in front of me in Neutral Milk Hotel. And from then on, I started becoming really inspired by Jeff Mangum’s lyrics, which kind of prompted me into doing spoken word poetry and things like that in high school, before I started playing music. That really was, like, that moment for me. And it would be a few more years before I’d actually start playing music, but that sort of re-awakened a passion in me for listening to music.

BLAST: When did you begin writing your own songs?

AS: Poetry and spoken word was my main passion. But then, when I had just turned 18, I was really seeking more fulfillment. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to really invest myself in something big, something that would take all of me and something that I could hone in on and spend my time on and work really hard on. And I was passionate about the words I was writing, so I thought the next step would be to teach myself how to play some instruments. And I didn’t sing. I didn’t have any background in singing, besides to music I liked in the shower and in the car and things like that. But it just felt like the next thing to do. So I was going through this period where I was really miserable and wanted to get out of it, and found that singing really helped. And so I taught myself guitar and put all my words to music.

BLAST: How did you come up with the name Lady Lamb the Beekeeper?

AS: Three years ago, when I started playing, I was having trouble sleeping, because I was just so excited about what I was doing. Making the songs was so new and exciting that I couldn’t even wait to, like, get up and start working. So I was essentially recording a song a day for days and days and days, just working all day and night and finishing a track, and then starting a new one. And so, in my sleep, I was having very vivid dreams and I was also, at the same time, sort of writing lyrics in my sleep. And it was driving me a little crazy, because I kept waking myself up and really wanting to write them down. So I started keeping a notebook for lyrics so I could scribble down while I was dreaming them up or whatever, and then to also just double as a journal to just scrawl down phrases and visuals from my dreams, because they were inspiring me as well. And “Lady Lamb the Beekeeper” was written in my notebook one morning when I woke up. I have no recollection of what I was thinking of or dreaming of when I wrote it down. But sure enough, there it was. It was right around the same time when I was making recordings and wanted to put them together on a CD. And I wanted to have a moniker, so it felt like the most perfect fit.

BLAST: Congratulations on your win at the Boston Music Awards. What was that experience like?

AS: I love Boston. I feel so honored to have won that award. I had been working really hard for a year, trying to play as many shows in Boston as I could while living in Maine, and sort of building a fanbase there. And I realized that the Boston scene felt just as much like home as home did. The bands and the people that come out to shows, everyone’s so supportive and warm. I kept seeing the same faces and ended up making good friends playing in the Boston area. So I’m really excited to continue playing in Boston and play bigger shows there.

BLAST: What’s going to be your focus for 2011?

AS: This year, I really need to make my record. That’s the main thing. I think by early spring I’ll have figured that out. I’d like to do it in Maine. I just need proper equipment to be able to produce my next record so it sounds professional. I don’t have huge plans or huge hopes. It’s not my overall dream to be signed. I’m not doing what I’m doing now to get a record deal. I don’t have too much faith in that side of things right now. … I don’t know what’ll really happen (but) I think so far I’ve done pretty well on my own.

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper plays with Faces on Film at 8pm Thursday at Café 939, 939 Boylston St. Tickets are $12.

NEW YORK — This year was definitely one of the strongest in recent memory for the CMJ Music Marathon. As any music fan knows, one of the great joys in being passionate about this art form is the knowledge that some great new discovery could be just around the bend. This week epitomized that. Here, some final thoughts on the festival:

Best Acts: The Jezabels, Fences, Hypernova, Alcoholic Faith Mission

Worst Act: Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

Most Overrated: Francis and the Lights

Act that Most Resembled a Blog: The Pack AD (Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber)

Most Strange: Gobble Gobble

Most Memorable: Big Freedia

Loudest/Most Ironic: Quiet Loudly

Best Showcases: The Planetary Group, Brooklyn Vegan

We’ve included a high-res photo gallery. Please be patient and allow them to load! Please DO NOT post the photos anywhere else.

Photos by Sarah Be for Blast Magazine

Who were some of your favorite CMJ acts? Sound off below!

NEW YORK — We made it! Blast closed out the 2010 CMJ Music Marathon with a full day and night of music in Brooklyn and Manhattan on Saturday, and emerged scarred for life in the best way possible.

Brooklyn Vegan showcase: We started the afternoon at Public Assembly in Williamsburg, where a number of acts, including Ted Leo, Wild Nothing, Titus Andronicus and Marnie Stern, graced two stages. But the real story of the day was a jaw-dropping performance by Big Freedia.

Big Freedia, for the uninformed, is a transgendered rapper who is part of the New Orleans queer rap movement known as “Sissy Bounce.” Her songs (including the aptly-named “Azz Everywhere,” which feature chant-y call-and-response flows), are perfectly catchy on their own, but it’s the dancing that really puts the “bounce” into this genre. There’s no two ways about it — Big Freedia’s rump-shaking defies all knowledge of physics, gravity and, frankly, reality. Do NOT try this at home.

As the audience (who had been plied with free vodka, bourbon and Magic Hat all afternoon) looked on, entranced, horrified or something in between, Freedia and a small entourage of dancers booty-popped around the stage, at one point breaking into a version of “Empire State of Mind.” As she bent over and gyrated in between verses, Big Freedia’s metal studded belt caught the stage lighting and pulsed as quickly as a strobe light — and I wouldn’t be surprised if it caused some seizures, too. Clad in a plaid shirt, grey jeans and sporting a fabulously side-swiped hairstyle with a single blond streak, this “Queen Diva” provided the perfect entertainment to round out the week (pun intended). If sissy bounce is wrong, we don’t want to be right.

Thieving Irons: Later in the evening, while killing time between performances, Blast stumbled upon the pleasant surprise of  Thieving Irons (the solo project of former Pela guitarist Nate Martinez) at Rockwood Music Hall. Although the crowd unfortunately neglected to appreciate the subtleties of a venue like Rockwood Music Hall, Martinez and his Thieving Irons bandmates pushed through their set with grace and a great deal of visual interest. Martinez’ voice, reminiscent of Neil Young but with the raspy vocal turns of Bruce Springsteen, leads a collection of songs evocative of a mellower, trippier Band of Horses. Slide and electric guitars, a dulcimer, a trumpet and an EVI (electric valve instrument) all made for an aesthetically pleasing experience. The music stands out, but the vocal harmonies can be somewhat lacking — not of skill or technique, but rather of imagination and experimentation. While the EVI did an excellent job of compensating for this void, Martinez might better serve his unique vision by pushing the parameters of harmony and bringing the vocal component up to par with the rest of the band.

Alcoholic Faith Mission: Bringing CMJ 2010 to a close was Alcoholic Faith Mission at Fat Baby. On Blast’s list of must-sees, this six-piece band from Denmark did not disappoint the crowded club on Saturday night. From peaceful to raucous to explosive and back again, AFM employs a random collection of instruments – glockenspiel, trombone, and accordion – that help to create the undulation that is the band’s sound. Dark, melancholic and sometimes sarcastic lyrics cut through the ups and downs of the music with precise juxtaposition. “Nut in Your Eye,” for example, begins in a surprisingly mellow, melodious manner. Ultimately, though, what takes Alcoholic Faith Mission from a good band to a great band is the obvious camaraderie among its members – a noticeable reverence each player seems to have for the next, still apparent through the thick guise of sex, booze and (indie) rock ‘n’ roll.

Blast photographer Sarah Berman contributed to this article.

NEW YORK — On Friday, we decided to switch things up a little bit and attend some of the afternoon showcases CMJ had to offer. Pianos, in particular, had a great lineup as part of the Planetary Group/Future Sounds Day Party.

The Jezabels: We wandered in just in time to see The Jezabels, a stellar four-piece from Sydney, Australia. Singer Hayley Mary sounds like a hybrid of Kate Bush and Sara Quin (and bears a strong resemblance to the latter). The band’s percussive, piano-laden atmospheric music swelled to fill the tiny performance space, and Mary alternately displayed swagger, prancing around the stage in a black leather jacket, and vulnerability through her high-pitched intonations.

Fake Problems: This quartet from Naples, Florida plays straightforward rock with a blues bent, a la The Gaslight Anthem. But they aren’t afraid to throw in a hook or even stray into pop-punk territory every now and then. Singer Chris Farren, clad in a tight-fitting polo shirt, gives off a boy next door vibe, but that doesn’t overshadow the passion behind his songs.

Two Hours Traffic: Closing out the afternoon performances was this band from Prince Edward Island, Canada. The group plays mostly Weezer-esque rock (without the nerd aesthetic), but when singer Liam Corcoran picks up an acoustic guitar, a couple of the songs border on country. Either way, the music is toe-tapping and catchy, with plenty of oohs and aahs. And when the members harmonize, they’re quite reminiscent of another clean-cut, good-looking (fab) foursome.

Photos by Sarah Be for Blast Magazine

NEW YORK — Thursday night brought us over the mid-week hump at the CMJ Music Marathon, as we made the rounds from Brooklyn to Manhattan to catch some of our must-sees.

My Other Friend: We kicked things off with Brooklyn’s own My Other Friend, who played a short, tight set at Spike Hill. The trio’s sound is reminiscent of Wolf Parade, and the sparkly notes courtesy of keyboardist Holly MacGibbon are often dropped like unexpected treats into the already strong music. My Other Friend’s songs are unpredictable enough to keep listeners paying attention, without being so non-intuitive as to be distracting or frustrating.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: As we waited for First Aid Kit to take the stage in the stuffy, cramped downstairs section of The Delancey, young singer/songwriter Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson “entertained” the crowd with what can only be described as stereotypically bad bar music with strained vocals. I don’t normally like knocking artists at CMJ — it’s a waste of time and energy when there’s so many great acts to be seen throughout the week — but here I’ll make an exception. Robinson spent much of his set explaining to the audience how much better the music would sound had he been able to play his keyboard in addition to the guitar (he lost the power cord earlier that day). This seems unlikely, unless the keyboard had some sort of magical power. Robinson threw back a shot immediately before launching into his first song, and I can only hope it was his sixth or seventh, because that’s the only way this performance could make any sense whatsoever.

First Aid Kit: This charming Swedish sister duo was the perfect antidote to the crowd’s restlessness after Robinson’s set, filling the packed room with harmonious melodies that could make the Indigo Girls weep. Their voices blend together so well, it’s inevitable that 20-year-old Johanna and 17-year-old Klara Soderberg share DNA. Klara’s voice is a transcendent blend of Feist and Judy Garland, and her sister’s wide range creates the perfect complementary backdrop for which to showcase it. Klara and Johanna took to the stage with a confidence and stride well beyond their years and crooned delicate but invigorating folk songs buoyed by guitars, drums and a dulcimer.

Hypernova: One of our standout acts at this year’s CMJ, Hypernova tore through an energetic midnight set at R Bar that gradually drew in a sizable crowd from the adjacent bar area. Hailing from Tehran but now based in New York, the band’s sound is in the vein of Editors or Interpol, with a live performance that’s absolutely mesmerizing. Drummer Kami attacks his kit with fierce abandon, guitarist Kodi looks like the love child of Russell Brand and Joey Ramone, and frontman Raam is mostly stoic throughout it all, in Buddy Holly glasses and a hoodie. Having toured with the likes of Sisters of Mercy, the band’s debut full-length album, “Through the Chaos,” was released earlier this year. Much has been made of the re-emergence of music and art in Iran, and it would be easy to fetishize Hypernova from a political angle (their first EP was called “Who Says You Can’t Rock in Iran?”). Larger contexts aside, the music is brilliant enough to speak for itself.

Photos by Sarah Be for Blast Magazine

NEW YORK — Think of Beauregard, the debut album from indie duo Pepper Rabbit, which will be released next week, as a musical scrapbook, truly global in its scope. Featuring Eastern musical influences and sampling the horn section of a Bayou funeral procession, the record was recorded in New Orleans in 2008 and 2009. Originally conceived as a solo project for frontman Xander Singh, Pepper Rabbit’s other half is Luc Laurent.

Leading up to CMJ, Singh jotted down thoughts about the band and his personal musical tastes.

BLAST: Describe your sound in 10 words or less.

XANDER SINGH: Funny orchestral, weird, experimental, good old-fashioned pop.

BLAST: Which three artists are your biggest influences?

XS: Salem Al Fakir, David Bowie, Jamie Lidell.

BLAST: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far?

XS: Spoon, “Transference”

BLAST: If you were going to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three albums would you bring with you?

XS: Jamie Lidell’s “Compass,” Supertramp’s “The Very Best of … ,” David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs”

BLAST: Name a song you wish you’d written.

XS: “Five Years,” David Bowie

BLAST: Name something non-musical that has inspired your songwriting.

XS: Golf and dogs.

BLAST: What was your first concert?

XS: Tina Turner with Lionel Richie opening

BLAST: What’s the number one thing you can’t live without on the road?

XS: A good selection of Patton Oswalt stand-up on the iPod.

BLAST: If you could ban one artist from ever making music again (or ever having made music), who would it be?

XS: I would just make sure Creed didn’t make a second album. The first one’s pretty decent.

BLAST: Which other acts are you hoping to see during CMJ Week?

XS: Candy Claws, Violens.

Pepper Rabbit plays at 8:30 p.m. Friday at Cake Shop, and at 1 p.m. Saturday at Cameo Gallery.

NEW YORK — Day Two of CMJ was a stellar one for music, one that will set a high bar for the rest of the week. With so many conflicting shows, we weren’t able to see everything we wanted to (My Jerusalem and Wild Nothing were among the acts that fell by the wayside), but the gigs we got to were more than satisfying.

Fences: With several performances scheduled for the week, Seattle’s Fences is one of the hot tickets this year. Blast was lucky enough to catch an early performance yesterday afternoon at the tiny Rockwood Music Hall, whose coffee shop atmosphere and excellent acoustics lent themselves to the band’s moody, intricate aesthetic. Fences, whose self-titled debut album was released at the end of September, is the brainchild of singer/songwriter Chris Mansfield. On stage, Mansfield gives off a slight Michael Stipe vibe — or at least, something akin to Stipe’s heavily tattooed, rebellious younger brother. His confessional lyrics are Elliott Smith-like in their sensitivity, but the guitar and piano-driven sound overall evokes the darker sensibility of bands like The National or The Middle East. Move this act high on your list for what to see for the remainder of the week.

Parallels: When we caught Parallels at Backstage Bar a little after 10 p.m., singer Holly Dodson described the show as merely a “soundcheck rehearsal” for a later show that night in Brooklyn. But you’d never know it. The Toronto duo, consisting of Dodson on keyboards and former Crystal Castles drummer Cameron Findlay, plowed through a polished set of danceable dark wave.  The group stands out for Findlay’s use of a live drumkit rather than an electronic one or pre-programmed beats. The cherubic Dodson is an unassuming stage presence, but her high-pitched voice is the perfect fit for Parallels’ shimmery synth-pop sound Think New Order fronted by Cyndi Lauper.

Empires: Rounding out the evening was the Gig Maven showcase at National Underground. We caught the tail end of Empires’ set, which hearkened back to the grunge boom of the 1990s. Singer Sean Van Vleet’s gravelly snarl bears more than a passing resemblance to Eddie Vedder. It’s refreshing to see a modern rock band that doesn’t rely on a shtick to enhance their music — and Empires doesn’t need to. Their straightforward rock was more than enough to entertain the crowd.

Photos by Sarah Be for Blast Magazine.

NEW YORK — Signed to Arts & Crafts, the record label that’s home to indie darlings like Broken Social Scene, Stars and Feist, Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Mangan plays Americana-inspired folk rock. After receiving critical acclaim in Canada, Mangan’s album, “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” was recently released in the States. The crooner’s recent discussion with Blast proved that title to be a fitting one.

BLAST: Describe your sound in 10 words or less.

DAN MANGAN: Talkative. Song. Squeaky. Strum. Gravel.

BLAST: Which three artists are your biggest influences?

DM: Currently? Radiohead, Bon Iver and M. Ward.

BLAST: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far?

DM: Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs”

BLAST: If you were going to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three albums would you bring with you?

DM: Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” The Beatles’ “Abbey Road”

BLAST: Name a song you wish you’d written.

DM: Beck, “Nobody’s Fault But My Own”

BLAST: Name something non-musical that has inspired your songwriting.

DM: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughter House Five”

BLAST: What was your first concert?

DM: Charlotte Diamond. She’s a Canadian children’s singer. And she was kickass.

BLAST: What’s the number one thing you can’t live without on the road?

DM: Honesty. On the stage, in the van.

BLAST: If you could ban one artist from ever making music again (or ever having made music), who would it be?

DM: Sunshine isn’t as bright without a few cloudy days.

BLAST: Which other acts are you hoping to see during CMJ Week?

DM: I heard Devotchka is playing. That’d be cool. I’ve also heard good things about “Wolf! Wolf! Gay Wolf! Tiger!” Just kidding, that band doesn’t exist. At least not to my knowledge. But man, that would be sweet.

Dan Mangan performs Thursday at 7 p.m. at The Mercury Lounge Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 2 p.m. at Fontana’s, and Saturday at 2 p.m. at Piano’s.

NEW YORK — Borrowing a page from the ’90s grunge handbook, Empires plays passionate, straightforward rock free of any gimmicks and pretense. The DIY quartet take a no-nonsense approach to their music, having financed, recorded and distributed their debut record, “HOWL,” independently in 2008. Their latest effort, an EP titled Bang, earned the group a slot on this year’s CMJ roster, where they’re sure to make a mark. Here’s some basic info about Empires, courtesy of frontman Sean Van Vleet.

BLAST: Describe your sound in 10 words or less.

SEAN VAN VLEET: The Hulk at a dinner party. No napkin.

BLAST: Which three artists are your biggest influences?

SVV: Radiohead, any recorded blues out of the’ 30s (lately), Jimi Hendrix

BLAST: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far?

SVV: Not sure about album, but “Comin Through” by The War on Drugs is the tune doing it for me lately. If their album is anything like that song, that’s it gonna be it.

BLAST: If you were going to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three albums would you bring with you?

SVV: “I Want You” by Marvin Gaye, Best of Robert Johnson (not sure it exists, but I’d make sure all 29 songs were together), “The Bends” by Radiohead

BLAST: Name a song you wish you’d written.

SVV: “Heroes,” David Bowie

BLAST: Name something non-musical that has inspired your songwriting.

SVV: “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. If you don’t read this book, you will never truly live.

BLAST: What was your first concert?

SVV: Lenny Kravitz and The Black Crowes. Not bad for an introduction, huh?

BLAST: What’s the number one thing you can’t live without on the road?

SVV: Mike Kodak, our tour manager. He’s a thing…trust me. One love, Mike!

BLAST: If you could ban one artist from ever making music again (or ever having made music), who would it be?

SVV: Eddie Murphy. Everything else about him rules.

BLAST: Which other acts are you hoping to see during CMJ Week?

SVV: Ghostface Killah, can’t wait!

NEW YORK — Coed electro-pop duo Parallels craft intricate ’80s-influenced synth rhythms reminiscent of upbeat Depeche Mode.

Consisting of former Crystal Castles’ drummer Cameron Findlay and frontwoman Holly Dodson, Parallels are riding a wave of hype on the heels of their debut album, “Visionaries.”

Dodson recently shared some of her personal music tastes with Blast.

BLAST: Describe your sound in 10 words or less.

HOLLY DODSON: Dreamy dance floor pop with electronic undertones.

BLAST: Which three artists are your biggest influences?

HD: Of all time it would be Kate Bush, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.

BLAST: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far?

HD: Besides “Visionaries” (ha!), Arcade Fire put out a real good album (“The Suburbs.”)

BLAST: If you were going to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three albums would you bring with you?

HD: “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac, “Cosmo’s Factory” by Creedence Clearwater Revival and “Two Suns” by Bat for Lashes

BLAST: Name a song you wish you’d written.

HD: There are lots, but right now I’d choose “Pet Semetary” by The Ramones, so we covered it!

BLAST: Name something non-musical that has inspired your songwriting.

HD: I always read something from the Romantic era for inspiration whenever I need a fix.

BLAST: What was your first concert?

HD: I think it was Neil Diamond. One of my childhood friends was weirdly obsessed with him so her mom got some tickets and brought a bunch of 7-year-olds.

BLAST: What’s the number one thing you can’t live without on the road?

HD: Some good books.

BLAST: If you could ban one artist from ever making music again (or ever having made music), who would it be?

HD: Ke$ha. No offense …

BLAST: Which other acts are you hoping to see during CMJ Week?

HD: I’m excited for the High Rise/Pop Culture Showcase that we’ll be playing, with Natalia Kills and ArpLine, just to name two. Plus lots of other amazing artists!

Parallels plays Backstage Bar at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday and The Bell House at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.

NEW YORK — Your intrepid team of Blast reporters took to the streets of Manhattan with enthusiasm last night, ready to kick off what’s sure to be a fast-paced week of consuming music. Predictably, venues seemed to be working out first night kinks; nearly everything we saw was running about an hour behind, which resulted in some happy accidents and new discoveries. After all, that’s what CMJ’s all about, right? What follows is a recap of some of our faves.

Francis and the Lights: Our first stop was the MTV party at the Studio at Webster Hall, where buzz band Francis and the Lights entertained a packed crowd. The group’s stage lineup rotates, but last night singer Francis Starlite  was supported by two backing musicians, who were cast into anonymity not just by their Ray Bans, but also by Starlite’s showmanship. Clad in a black Snuggie/cape-like clothing item for the first part of the set, he occasionally broke into spastic dancing and had brief, intense staring contests with members of the audience. The band’s recipe of subdued synthesizers blended with a dash of funk, soul and reggae is not entire dissimilar from fellow Wesleyan alums (and touring mates) MGMT. How long before Wesleyan-gaze becomes a genre?

A Million Years: A Million Years commanded the stage at Arlene’s Grocery with that typical Brooklyn guitar-driven, melodic indie rock we love so much. Singer Keith Madden’s voice is wide-ranging and whispers of Coldplay’s Chris Martin, while Nick Werber is extraordinary on lead guitar. Last night’s show featured a heavier, more rock version of Phoenix (with whom A Million Years has shared a stage in the past). Drum machines, synthesizers and electronic foot pedals add depth and interest to the band’s sound. A Million Years’ album “Mischievous Maker” was released in June and was produced by Shannon Ferguson of Longwave.

Freedom or Death: We ended the night at Fontana’s, which was playing host to an all-Canadian showcase. In their New York debut, Toronto’s Freedom or Death — which the Wall Street Journal named as a “must-see” act at the festival — played moody, melodic pop that was alternately reminiscent of Rusted Root and The Postal Service (seriously). Officially a duo, they performed as a quartet last night, and extra points for singer Sway’s passionate beating of a cowbell (!) during one song as he strutted across the tiny stage. Unfortunately, technical difficulties caused Freedom or Death’s brief-to-begin-with set to descend into awkwardness, culminating in a recruitment of audience members to come on stage and tell jokes to kill time. But songs like set-closer “This Crowded Room” clearly show that the act has promise.

Gobble Gobble: In terms of a weirdness factor, it’ll be hard to top Gobble Gobble, from Edmonton, Alberta, whose set bordered on performance art. A mix of house music, a psychedelic version of Stomp, and what can only be described as a demented children’s show, the group turned Fontana’s into a mini-rave for 30 minutes. The elaborate stage setup — which actually extended out from the stage into the crowd — featured a rotation of noisemakers, shovels, strings of lights and other props. It was like a musical acid trip, or Passion Pit on crack. It’s clear the band members, who bounded around the club with the sweaty exuberance (and masks) of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, are having fun with what they’re doing. The audience appeared to share in their joy, although I’m sure everyone left wondering what exactly it was they just witnessed.

Photos by Sarah Be for Blast Magazine

NEW YORK — For Brooklyn trio My Other Friend, CMJ is the perfect launching pad to build buzz for their forthcoming debut album, “Burning Bright Tonight.” The band has perfected an emotional blend of orchestral indie and garage rock.

Singer/guitarist Andy Simmons recently shed some light on the group’s influences.

BLAST: Describe your sound in 10 words or less.

ANDY SIMMONS: If ELO wrote the soundtrack to “Blade Runner.” That’s us.

BLAST: Which three artists are your biggest influences?

AS: Carey Mercer from Frog Eyes, Roy Orbison and Bruce Springsteen.

BLAST: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far?

AS: It’s a tie between (Beach House’s) “Teen Dream” and (Arcade Fire’s) “The Suburbs.”

BLAST: If you were going to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three albums would you bring with you?

AS: Yikes, tough question. I’m going to go with (Bruce Springsteen’s) “Born to Run,” (Radiohead’s) “OK Computer” and (Stevie Wonder’s) “Songs in the Key of Life.”

BLAST: Name a song you wish you’d written.

AS: “Common People” by Pulp. I effing love that song.

BLAST: Name something non-musical that has inspired your songwriting.

AS: The Tennessee Williams play “Orpheus Descending.” It’s beautiful.

BLAST: What was your first concert?

AS: Billy Joel and Elton John. I must have been 8 or 9. My dad took me.

BLAST: What’s the number one thing you can’t live without on the road?

AS: The ultimate road soda: the juice of one lime, two cans of Tecate, four dashes of Tabasco. Serve in a Big Gulp cup over ice, and enjoy!

BLAST: If you could ban one artist from ever making music again (or ever having made music), who would it be?

AS: Easy! The Eagles

BLAST: Which other acts are you hoping to see during CMJ Week?

AS: Bear Hands, Frankie Rose, The Yes Way

My Other Friend plays Wednesday at 1 a.m. (technically Thursday) at Webster Hall, and Thursday at 8:15 p.m. at Spike Hill.

NEW YORK — The first artist we caught up with at the 2010 CMJ Music Marathon was Brooklyn’s own ArpLine, who will be appearing at the High Rise/PopJustice showcase Wednesday night. The group’s energetic electro-rock seems like the perfect recipe for the first half of what’s sure to be a hectic week.

Lead singer Sam Tyndall took a break from CMJ prep to respond to Blast’s artist Q&A.

BLAST: Describe your sound in 10 words or less.

SAM TYNDALL: Psychedelic industrial.

BLAST: Which three artists are your biggest influences?

ST: David Bowie, Harmonia, & Wire

BLAST: What’s your favorite album of 2010 so far?

ST: Light Asylum’s In Tension

BLAST: If you were going to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three albums would you bring with you?

ST: David Bowie, “Scary Monsters”; Nine Inch Nails, “The Downward Spiral”; and the “Bladerunner” soundtrack.

BLAST: Name a song you wish you’d written.

ST: New Order’s “Your Silent Face”

BLAST: Name something non-musical that has inspired your songwriting.

ST: Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”

BLAST: What was your first concert?

ST: New Kids On The Block

BLAST: What’s the number one thing you can’t live without on the road?

ST: Friendship! And drugs.

BLAST: If you could ban one artist from ever making music again (or ever having made music), who would it be?

ST: Wavves

BLAST: Which other acts are you hoping to see at CMJ?

ST: The Golden Filter, Tamaryn and Light Asylum

Attention indie music fans: Blast will once again be running all over New York City for the CMJ Music Marathon this week, bringing you concert reviews, artist interviews and photos from the hottest, hippest shows this annual festival has to offer.

This year’s lineup features some great artists, including Phoenix, Eisley and Das Racist. But here at Blast, we’re all about discovering new artists during this hectic week, so we’ll be focusing on more under-the-radar bands. After all, the best thing about the Music Marathon, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, is the potential to see the Next Big Thing in indie music and not even know it.

Be sure to check back here often for daily recaps and featured artists, and follow us on Twitter (@blastmagazine) for highlights from the panel discussions during the day, plus live updates every night.

The past two years have been particularly prolific ones for singer-songwriter Pete Yorn, who released two records in 2009 (Break Up, a collection of duets with Scarlett Johansson, and solo effort, Back and Fourth) and is now touring behind a self-titled solo record which was released last week.

Yorn will likely showcase material from the new record when he plays Northampton’s Pearl Street Ballroom tonight.

The record, incidentally, came out almost by accident, after Frank Black of The Pixies approached Yorn about recording together in 2008, at the same time he was preparing to record the songs that would eventually become “Back and Fourth.” Not wanting to miss an opportunity to record with one of his influences, Yorn took a break from the project, flew to Oregon, and recorded “Pete Yorn” with Black acting as producer during a whirlwind, impromptu five-day studio session, while also battling the flu.

Lyrically, the album feels a bit rushed (and understandably so). But musically, it’s on point. Yorn has said that Black took a more back-to-basics approach, and songs like “Rock Crowd” and first single “Precious Stone” are indicative of that. One of the strongest tracks is a cover of Gram Parson’s “Wheels.” The folky, acoustic guitar and harmonica-laden sounds that dominated Yorn’s debut, 2001′s musicforthemorningafter are almost nowhere to be found. Instead, his fifth solo effort is his most plugged-in release to date.

As they prepare to release their ninth studio album, “Something for the Rest of Us,” it would be understandable if multi-platinum crowd-pleasers the Goo Goo Dolls were feeling a little blas© about their music career. But even after 24 years, four Grammy nominations, 13 top 10 songs and more than 10 million albums sold, that’s not the case.

From the first notes of raucous album opener "Sweetest Lie," it’s clear that the band isn’t holding back on its latest effort.

Bassist and founding member Robby Takac recently chatted with Blast about the Goo Goo Dolls’ evolution after more than two decades of recording together, their perspective on the new record and approach as they move forward in a changing industry.

News of yet another new record might leave fans wondering how "Something for the Rest of Us" differs from the group’s previous efforts.

"I’ve had to answer that question a lot of times over the past 20 years," Takac said. "And I guess the only thing I can narrow it down to is, it’s made by a band that’s been together for four more years. … It never gets easier. Whenever you sincerely want to do a better job than you did the last time, you know it’s not going to be easy, because you have to go places and you have to reach plateaus that you haven’t been to before. … Musically and topically, we’re just looking around us to see what kind of things we can bring into this to keep it interesting and to keep it moving forward."

To that end, Takac explained, the record draws heavily from the newsworthy events of recent years.

"We try to stick to things that are relevant around us, because we come from a school that pretty much wears their hearts on their sleeves," he explained. "I think the political landscape is part of it. I think the social landscape is part of it. I think the technological landscape is part of it. Technology is moving a lot faster than people … can keep up with. … It’s interesting to just watch people try to assimilate those things into their life."

As far as the title (which came courtesy of singer Johnny Rzeznick), Takac said the band was trying to tap into a perceived sense of camaraderie among the proverbial "little guys."

"As we were writing this record, I think one of the things we were looking at is sort of (being able to channel) that frustration that people are feeling," he explained. "People look for something to grab onto, to kind of let them know that they’re not the only people feeling that way. … From my point of view, (it means) there’s an awful lot of people who make the decisions for the rest of us. And I think the tables have turned. I think there’s a hell of a lot more of the rest of us than there are of those who are controlling everything. And I think that group of people really needs to have their voice heard."

Though the album wasn’t released until August 31^st (preceded by first single "Home," which began radio rotation in June), the band found itself in the difficult position of premiering new songs throughout shows over the summer, Takac said, and finding that fans already were familiar with the songs — clearly through less than legal means.

"I know those people didn’t pay for those songs, and it (bums) me out that a thing that we used to get paid for … is no longer for sale, is pretty much free now," he acknowledged. "We have to figure out, okay, how do we exist, then?"

Their record label’s solution was to intervene and have the bootlegs taken down, a tactic that Takac seems to view as less than forward-thinking.

"That is a fight that you don’t want to have," he said, laughing. "And they learned that really quickly, like within three or four days. You don’t want to have that fight, man. It’s like, this is the way it works now. And, if you’re going to dig your heels in the dirt and say, ‘You’re stealing my music, therefore I’m not going to deal with you,’ then you’re not going to have any bands anymore. It’s just the way the world is."

"You have to morph with that," he added. "You have to figure out what your place is in that music industry. It’s not about changing anything. You’re not going to change what goes on. … For a band that’s been around for as long as we have, it’s just something that you’re going to need to understand and embrace. … Some of the companies are going to figure it out and they’re going to make it work, and some of them aren’t."

For a band that started in the 1980s, Takac (the only member of the trio who keeps an active personal Twitter account) said it’s been a bumpy road adjusting to the changing responsibilities bands face in the modern age.

"It used to be, a band would make their record, and the band’s job was to, A, write great songs; B, make a great record; C, go out there and perform those (songs) for people, and your job was pretty much done at that point. There’s a whole other component now that involves technology. And if your band, and if (the) people who surround you don’t understand the importance of that technology, you’re going to get left in the dust these days. "

"We’re a lucky band," he went on. "I mean, we’ve got 13 songs that have hit the top 10 that people come to see us play. So, we can go play shows. We know we can do that. So, how do we make up the rest of it? … How do we figure out how to maintain what we do, keep our band and still make you feel that (connection)? That’s a huge process."

While it’s undeniable that songs like "Black Balloon" and the ubiquitous "Iris" have propelled the Goo Goo Dolls to the megastar status that allows them such luxuries, one gets the sense that Takac thinks of it as a double-edged sword.

"With a band like us, there’s a (divide) between things that we’d like to try, things that we’d like to work into what we do, and things that are appropriate for what we do," Takac said. "And I guess that all (factors into) how your band … moves forward. I don’t think you’re ever going to hear a Goo Goo Dolls hip-hop CD, you know? But I do know that the fact that hip-hop has made its way into our lives over the years, you know, that there’s components of it that we’ve borrowed."

Fans will be hard-pressed to find any traces of hip-hop on "Something for the Rest of Us," which sticks to the tried and true Goo Goo Dolls formula of anthemic pop/rock. Rzeznick’s lyrics, which tend to be generic, are sung in such soaring hooks that it doesn’t really matter what he’s saying. The man has perfected the art of writing an arena-ready chorus.

On the technical side, the band enlisted help from people like Butch Vig (of Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins fame) for this record. In terms of production, Takac said, the band draws much of its inspiration from U2 albums ("There’s something about the way those records sound, it’s just crazy good," he gushed), although he was reluctant to name specific artists from whom the band draws musical influence.

"People are always a little surprised, I guess, when I talk about music I like," said Takac, who runs a small record label as a side project. "I’ve been signing Japanese girl rock bands, J-rock bands. So, the majority of my time right now is spent listening to Japanese girls screaming over indie rock music."

"I’m not going to drag you into that world right now," he added with a chuckle.

So, aside from running record labels, how do the band members spend their time between records?

"It’s usually a couple very, very short vacations, a couple of extended nervous breakdowns, a bunch of rehearsals, a good chunk of not speaking to each other," he said, laughing. "You know, all of the excitement and chaos that makes for a good miniseries. And then we pull our act together and realize that all the quibbling really doesn’t matter and we need to get this record out."

As what started out as a hobby has evolved into a career, it’s clear that Takac and his bandmates are poised to adapt in order to sustain their momentum within a changing industry.

"I think our mindset’s a lot different. When our band started, there wasn’t an awful lot to do. You know, we weren’t competing with the Internet and video games and all this other stuff that’s out there. We had … cable and record players. … There’s a lot of instant gratification that happens right now. If you’re on the Internet and you’re reading something you don’t like, you know, you can just (close the window). You can change a remote. You have 200 channels. You (have) satellite radio, or you’re listening to one of the 4,000 records you have stored on your telephone. It’s like, all these options are out there for you.

"If our band were to come around right now, I don’t think we would have necessarily the patience to do what we did," he added. "We didn’t know what was out there, so we weren’t that depressed that we didn’t have it. Because, you know, we had to learn everything out of the back of a van, you know, and on the end of a pay phone. … We weren’t really looking for that success. We were just looking to be as badass as we could possibly be. And that’s what motivated us."

Though no one would probably characterize the Goo Goo Dolls as "badass" these days, Takac, for his, seems relieved that the band has a bit of success to ride on, and doesn’t envy artists who are just getting their start in this new era.

"It’s always a crapshoot," Takac said. "You’ve just got to do what you love to do and make it happen. To be able to do it for a job is amazing. But if you don’t, the ultimate reward is just having done something well."

Those emotional, acoustic ballad masters known as the Goo Goo Dolls play the Bank of America Pavilion tonight, where they’ll surely tease some songs off their forthcoming ninth studio album, "Something For the Rest of Us," out at the end of August. Bassist Robby Takac recently spoke with Blast about the new material and the band’s struggle to adapt to changes in the music industry over the past two decades.

Fans attending tonight’s show might want to take advantage of the Goo Goo Dolls’ ongoing partnership with U.S.A. Harvest (www.USAHarvest.com). The band’s street team collects canned goods and other non-perishable food items at each show to redistribute to local food banks and shelters. And whichever fan brings the most items gets an exclusive meet and greet with the Dolls.

A word of warning — the bar has been set pretty high. A record was recently broken when more than 7,000 items were collected in a single night.

Check out Blast’s September issue for a review of the record, as well as the full interview with Takac.

Fountains of Wayne guitarist Jody Porter recently released his debut solo record, "Close to the Sun." Fans of his primary group will be delighted by the catchy power pop of first single "Aurora," but as a whole, Porter touches on a broader spectrum of influences with this record than he ever has with Fountains of Wayne. The guitarist-turned-frontman recently chatted with Blast about the record, the pros and cons of branching out on his own. And longtime Fountains devotees, have no fear — though he’s focusing on his solo gig this summer, Porter assured us that the band is still going strong and are even in the process of finalizing a new record.

Blast: Was a solo career something that was always in the back of your mind? What finally prompted you to get the ball rolling and put this album out?

Jody Porter: A solo career was nothing I wanted to ever do, but it just became something that I ended up doing. I’d been in bands back in England that I wrote for and sang and fronted, and that was in the ‘90s, so as far as being a writer and all that, I’ve already kind of been there and done that. I’ve always liked playing in a band, but this is turning out to be a blast, too.

What’s the status of Fountains of Wayne?

JP: We’re still working on Fountains of Wayne. We have a record that’s being mixed right now. You know, there have been periods where I’ve gone off to do my own thing. And this is just an in-between thing. We’re definitely still doing the Fountains.

Are your Fountains of Wayne bandmates supportive of you going solo?

JP: Yeah. I mean, we all do different things on the side. It’s kind of the order of business from day one with that. It does probably lend itself (to side projects) for Fountains of Wayne to take three years in between things, you know? We’re good for a record every three years basically, is our work ethic. Plenty of time to do stuff in between.

Can you discuss the pros and cons of being a solo artist as opposed to a band member? Which do you prefer?

JP: A lot of times, you kind of have to do a little bit more production stuff just to get things rolling (as a solo artist).  I’m not much of a micromanager. Being in Fountains … day to day, there’s not a whole lot of stuff to do. This project I’m doing now is a little more DIY. So we do have some managers involved, but I find myself having (to make) a lot more decisions than I’m used to. Just kind of scheduling stuff, you know, studio stuff, even down to interviews. (In a group), if we’re all sitting around or something, it’s a lot easier to have a direction for what’s going to happen with the next bunch of shows or the next recording. I think it’s probably a little less intimidating.

Are you happy to have the Fountains of Wayne recognition, and a built-in fanbase behind you? Or would your rather people just discover your solo material on its own merits?

JP: You know, it really doesn’t matter to me. I think (my involvement in Fountains of Wayne) is probably just a footnote. (The solo record) is completely independent of Fountains of Wayne and probably a little more like my first band, The Belltower, in England. It’s a little bit more rock ‘n’ roll and it’s more of a psychedelic approach than a straight ahead power pop approach. For me, coming out of Fountains of Wayne, it’s such a departure that I feel like it’s almost just like a new thing completely, rather than being a solo record.

Who are your musical influences? Are there any artists who you feel you were able to tap into more now than you did with Fountains?

JP: Yeah, I’d say so. You get 100 percent freedom (as a solo artist). It’s just one of those things, I guess, that gives you a little bit more vision and room to move with it. As far as my influences go, they’re more obscure than Fountains of Wayne’s probably would be. You know, those guys are totally influenced by a different sort of realm of music than I am. I’m more into stuff like (English blues-rockers) The Pretty Things. I guess we kind of share a common love for the British Invasion stuff, obviously The Beatles and all, but I don’t think either (Fountains of Wayne songwriters) Chris (Collingwood) or Adam (Schlesinger) are particularly big Stones fans, and that was obviously a big part of my influence.

What are some of your favorite tracks on the record, or ones you’re most proud of?

JP: As far as just a verse, chorus, pop song approach, I think that "Aurora" is a good one. "A Beautiful Life," that was in the film “The Messenger.” (The film crew) just kind of approached me as, looking for something that was a little paradoxical or slightly cynical, but uplifting at the same time. "Cars on the Motorway," more of the edgier stuff, some of the louder songs, are really fun to play live.

Do you have any favorite solo artists who have branched off from bands and done their own thing?

JP: I’m really a big Pulp fan, and I think Jarvis (Cocker) has made the transition (well). Going back to The Beatles’ stuff, I think Lennon’s records were still amazing after The Beatles.

You’ve collaborated with a number of artists, including Juliana Hatfield, Jesse Malin and The Strokes’ Albert Hammond, Jr. Is there anyone you haven’t worked with whom you’d like to?

JP: A lot of the people I’ve worked with are just kind of friends. I’ll get a call and just drop by because I’m in the neighborhood or whatever, and it just ends up being kind of spontaneous. With Juliana, that was a gas, because I went in just to do maybe one or two songs and ended up being on pretty much the whole record. And it went really quickly. That was a fun collaboration. I can just grasp at straws and say I really like Primal Scream. A lot of British bands. Maybe (Oasis’) Noel Gallagher, whatever he’s doing now.

What was the first album you were obsessed with?

JP: I had a pretty groovy father who had been a musician. He was a folkie on RCA in the late ‘60s.  The first record that he bought me was probably on my fifth birthday, and I had already scratched and worn out all his vinyl, like spinning it around with my hand when I was a wee toddler. So he had to re-buy a bunch of things, but I got for my fifth birthday "Sergeant Pepper." I was kind of basically shown the light.

So, is this going to be a one-time solo thing? Do you see yourself releasing more solo material down the road?

JP: I think I’m going to be proactive with it. I mean, so far it’s gotten really good response, and I have a fairly big backlog of songs that I didn’t put on the record and a lot of new ones that were kind of thrown together.

Jody Porter plays Boston’s Lizard Lounge on August 14.

It’s difficult to pigeonhole London-based quartet Mumford & Sons, and that in itself is the crux of their appeal. Frontman (and group namesake) Marcus Mumford’s singing style is distinctly British, both in his self-deprecating lyrics and the accent with which he pronounces them, but the words are sung over foot-stomping chord arrangements that draw heavily from more typically American styles like country and folk.

The group’s members themselves don’t have a concrete description of their music — just don’t call them a bluegrass band.

"Because we’ve got a banjo in our band, a lot of people think, right, they’re a bluegrass band," Mumford said in a recent interview with Blast. "But we definitely don’t claim to be (one), because firstly, none of us are good enough musicians to call ourselves a bluegrass band."

"Our country is immersed in Americanized culture. … The most popular films are all American made, and the same with a lot of music," he went on. "When we were growing up, those influences were very present in the sort of cultural tapestry that made up what we lived in. … "(But) I wouldn’t say (our influences are) exclusively American music. British pop, like The Kinks and The Beatles, we look up to them just as much as we look up to any of the American songwriters that we love. So we’re a real hybrid blend, I suppose, of different types of music."

The recipe appears to be working. After releasing their debut album "Sigh No More" in the UK last October and in the U.S. in February, the band (Mumford, "Country" Winston Marshall, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane — all multi-instrumentalists) recently concluded a headlining U.S. tour and left a trail of buzz in their wake. Their single "Little Lion Man" has also made a dent in American alternative radio playlists, and they’re slated to team up with one of their idols, Ray Davies, on the Kinks’ singer’s collaboration album later this year.

Just three years ago, the future musicians of Mumford & Sons were all unknown fixtures on the London music scene whose paths crossed in the summer of 2007. By that fall, they were rehearsing together as a group, but unsure as to what kind of sound they were trying to hone.

"All four of us came from slightly different angles, musically," Mumford said. "Ben and I played in a jazz band together. At the end of school, I got really into country music. … Ted was playing a lot of blues. He’s a blues guitarist, really, by trade, but had also picked up a double bass. And Winston had been teaching himself the banjo and got really into some bluegrass music."

They decided to just mix everything together and chose the band name in order to evoke an old-timey British family business. Other acts soon began to take notice.

"How we became a band, really, was just through other bands inviting us along for the sake of fun, really, and just saying, ‘Come and play some gigs with us,’" Mumford explained. "That’s why we really take our live gigs very seriously, and we take what bands we tour with very seriously. Because a gig can be an entire experience from start to finish, not just like a focus on one band."

Supporting them on their American tour earlier this year was Australian outfit The Middle East, but the "pay it forward" approach extends beyond touring. Wanting to retain artistic control of their material, they self-produced three EPs and formed their own label to release "Sigh No More" independently. Mumford said they’re "definitely" interested in signing other acts.

"Not so much taking them under our wing so that we can have any kind of ownership, but more just, like, we were given so many steps up along the way when we first started as a band that we love the communal aspect of it, the community aspect of the music that we play. Musically speaking, a lot of the styles of the music that we love, like jazz and folk and blues, are very communal. They’re very based on relationships and that’s what inspires a lot of the music — not just kind of locking yourself away in a room and, you know, cranking out lots of different types of sounds and a song is made. The songs that we make are a result of rubbing off or being rubbed off on by lots of other people."

Relationships aside, Mumford & Sons’ evident business savvy probably won’t hurt their trajectory, either.

"No one quite knows what’s happening to the music industry. It’s kind of a changing world," Mumford said candidly. "We like the idea of being owners of (our music), and being in control of it, and having approval over everything, so that, in 10 years’ time, any mistakes we make along the way, we can say they were our mistakes. They weren’t mistakes made by people on behalf of us. That’s a distinction that is quite helpful for our mentality. I mean, it puts slightly more pressure on us … but we kind of like the idea of doing it more in that way, and then to team up with people who are really good at their jobs in other areas.

"Being in control and owning the record, at the end of the day, makes you the team captains," he added. "We have quite a large team now of people and record labels. Worldwide, we have a mix of major and independent record labels that we work with. They’re just really great people, and we got to pick them all. We got to pick our best team, which was really great. We’ve had some wonderful advice and some wonderful help. … We’re very, very lucky in that way."

“White Crosses,” the latest offering from Florida punk quartet Against Me!, finds singer Tom Gabel on the cusp of turning 30, exploring the awkward and sometimes painful in-between of his youthful punk roots and more moderate (though not politically so) adulthood.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the first single, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist.” Gabel muses, “Do you remember / When you were young and wanted to set the world on fire? / I was a teenage anarchist, but the politics were too convenient.”

Like their major label debut, 2007′s “New Wave,” “White Crosses” (out June 8 ) features anthemic, power chord-driven sing-alongs delivered with a healthy dose of attitude. The tightly-wound record clocks in at just over 35 minutes, and once again at the helm is veteran producer Butch Vig, whose fingerprints are all over the densely mixed 10-song collection. The recent addition of The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay as a touring member of the band should flesh out the tunes nicely on their tour dates this summer. And George Rebelo, formerly of Hot Water Music, proves himself to be a worthy substitute for longtime drummer Warren Oakes, who left the band about a year ago under less than amicable conditions.

Gabel may have relocated with his wife and infant daughter from the Florida college town music scene of Gainesville to the sleepy beach town of St. Augustine, but it’s clear that his political punk roots haven’t been completely overshadowed by his recent domestication. The album’s title, he’s said, was inspired by the “Cemetery of the Innocents,” a memorial to aborted fetuses, which the singer passed every day while writing the album in St. Augustine, Florida. In the corresponding song, he sneers, “White crosses on the church lawn / I wanna smash them all.”

But, perhaps owing to the regime change between their previous records and this one, some of the political posturing on “White Crosses” feels anachronistic. While earlier releases deftly skewered political figures like Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush, Gabel now resorts to name-checking … Robert McNamara?

The strongest songs on “White Crosses” come when Gabel adopts a more reflective, older-and-wiser tone, as on standout track “Because of the Shame,” set at the funeral of, presumably, an ex-girlfriend.

On the country-tinged (yes, you read that right) “Ache With Me,” he wonders, “Do you share the same sense of defeat? / Have you realized all the things you’ll never be? / Ideals turn to resentment / Open minds close up with cynicism.” By the song’s conclusion, he’s acquiesced to the notion that “You may not find all that you’re after / In the end, I hope it doesn’t matter.”

While some songs, like “Rapid Decompression,” feel passionate yet formulaic, others, like album closer “Bamboo Bones,” find the band branching out in new directions both lyrically and musically. The album ends with Gabel, his identity crisis seemingly resolved or at least dismissed, looking toward the future rather than the past, sounding almost hopeful as he repeats, “What God doesn’t give to you / You’ve got to go and get for yourself.”

Against Me! is on tour with Silversun Pickups. For Blast readers, they play Orlando at Hard Rock Cafe on June 15 and Brooklyn, at Williamsburg Waterfront on June 25.

On their third album, "American Slang," bluesy punk outfit The Gaslight Anthem are still trying their damnedest to pry off Bruce Springsteen’s King of the Working Class crown. The Boss himself is a fan of the group, having invited them to share the stage with him on more than one occasion.

Though the band members — singer/guitarist Brian Fallon, guitarist Alex Rosamilia, bassist Alex Levine, and drummer Benny Horowitz — all hail from New Jersey, Fallon recently relocated to decidedly less blue collar Brooklyn. He’s apparently not worried about the move damaging his Jersey cred; about half the songs reference New York City by name.

"American Slang," out June 15, is a perfectly decent album, though it does lose a bit of steam in the second half and falls short of the band’s previous offering, 2008′s "The ’59 Sound." The songs are catchy, nostalgic hybrids of punk rock and Americana, and as musicians, the band members have clearly matured since their last record, employing more sophisticated guitar riffs and song structures here. The title track and first single is the record’s finest, but other standout tracks include the raucous anthem "Stay Lucky" and slow-burning, moving album closer "We Did It When We Were Young."

But while Fallon delivers all his lines with what seems to be genuine earnestness, there’s a nagging feeling that his approach to songwriting is less personal in nature and more WWSD? (What Would Springsteen Do?). The characters in songs like "The Queen of Lower Chelsea" feel at best forgettable and at worst clich©.

Fallon also continues his sycophantic habit of dropping blatant allusions to his musical idols ("Mama never told me there’d be days like these"), a trait I suppose could be seen as either grating or endearing. Personally, I tend toward the former and would appreciate a little more subtlety.

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but in The Gaslight Anthem’s case, a little inspired originality might not hurt, either.

Gaslight Anthem plays New York June 15 at Irving Plaza with Tim Barry and Rival Schools and Boston August 2 at House of Blues.

It was during a self-imposed hiatus in between their sophomore album and most recent effort, "Work," that the members of Sweden’s Shout Out Louds realized how much music and their band meant to them, according to singer and chief songwriter Adam Olenius.

But it wasn’t until they started recording the songs for "Work," which was released in February, and performing live again that they truly understood how much their music meant to others, said Olenius, who chatted with Blast while the band was in New York City for a record release show earlier this year.

"We had a … seven, eight month break without playing. And now when we’re back, you sort of realize that people have been missing us," Olenius said, sounding incredulous. "It was a turning point in the band, that we realized that this is really important, and … that this is not just important for us. It’s important for people to listen to us as well. It’s hard to realize that you have an audience."

Indeed, since forming in 2001, the group has cultivated a following that’s gradually expanded from their native Stockholm to the United States, and continues to grow.

Even the album’s title, "Work," refers to the evolution of Shout Out Louds from a hobby to something more.

"It’s a strong word that we really liked, and we thought about how we realized after about three records that this is really what we want to do," Olenius said. "This is something that we see as a very positive work. Not anything about a job. It’s more the time you put into a project to make something work. And we just realized that this is what we want to do and this is our work."

After their break, Olenius said, he and his bandmates — keyboard/vocalist Bebban Stenborg, drummer Eric Edman, bassist Ted Malmros and guitarist Carl von Arbin —returned to the studio feeling refreshed and ready to adopt a more back-to-basics approach.

"I think every time you (make a record), you always want to try to do something different," he explained. "We decided to just do more of an old-school record with just focus on our instruments and have … a more traditional sound.

The album stays true to the Shout Out Louds’ traditional blend of generally exuberant indie rock, with danceable pop songs like "Fall Hard" and the anthemic, piano-anchored single "Walls.

"We worked a lot in the studio with the second album (2007′s ‘Our Ill Wills’), and then had time to sort of cut and paste and edit it and work with it," Olenius said. "This is a different sounding record. There’s less things happening. There’s more space and really more of a relaxed record. … It’s a bit different mood."

Despite all the bandmembers’ Swedish roots, all the songs are sung in more or less accent-free English, and have a distinct American indie rock/British New Wave sound. Olenius, for his part, said most of his musical influences come from abroad.

"My dad played a lot of Motown records (and) even Chicago or Queen, that sort of rock and roll music, when I was growing up," he recalled. "I do remember (knowing) I wanted to sort of do something with music when I stole a George Michael record from my sister. … But when I wanted to start a band, the way we are right now, was sort of listening to Stone Roses a lot, and even heavier things. For a few years, when I was a kid, I was a heavy metal fan."

"I don’t know if we have one band that we sort of look up to or (are) really influenced by," he added. "I don’t think there’s one band that I think everyone can agree on that we can hear in our music."

In fact, it wasn’t even music that brought the group together. They’ve all been friends since childhood in Sweden — something Olenius said can be seen as both a blessing and a curse.

"We’re all from the same school, so we know each other’s parents and all of that. It’s good. It’s easier to get over stuff," he said. "After almost eight years in the band, we realized that we have to listen more to each other and really talk about things. Sometimes, when you’re on the road … you have to be more careful with what you say. A big fight can really mess up things. Because, you know, we’re friends when we get home as well, (and) you don’t want to be alone when you get home, so you have to sort of nurture that relationship."

Having spent much of 2010 on the road already, the quintet has had plenty of time to practice their interpersonal skills. Though it may have only recently dawned on them that people besides themselves actually, you know, want to hear their music, Shout Out Louds seem more than happy to oblige.

"We’re lucky that we can sort of go everywhere," Olenius said. "Even though we’re not a big band or anything like that, we can still play for a few hundred here and there. And we try not to just focus on just playing (in America) and in Sweden. We do small shows in Italy for about 250 people and that sort of thing."

"We try to be everywhere and we like that."

When the members of San Antonio trio Girl in a Coma were discussing which songs to include on their new series of cover song EPs, they knew they wanted to focus on music that had a significant influence on their tastes. But the Smiths tune that is their namesake was never an option — it would have been too "cheesy," bassist Jenn Alva told Blast in a recent interview.

"I think we talked about (recording a version of ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’) years ago," said Alva, 29. "We were joking about it. In the process room, I started doing the bass line. Then we were like, no, no."

Songs by Elvis and Jeff Buckley were also tossed around, but ultimately the girls — Alva, and sisters Nina and Phanie Diaz, who handle lead vocal and drum duties respectively — decided on seven tracks from artists they grew up listening to, including hits from The Beatles ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps"), Patsy Cline ("Walkin’ After Midnight") and Joy Division ("Transmission").

"We have so many influences," Alva explained. "What we chose is kind of a collection of all of our influences, and just a wide spectrum of time periods (and) different types of music. And plus, the big thing too was, what can we take and then make it ours too? So, a lot of questions came into what we were choosing and, you know, how are we going to execute it? And we were left with these, which we’re happy about."

The songs appear on three EPs, collectively titled "Adventures in Coverland," whose release dates are staggered throughout the month of April. Together, the three 7" records comprise a board game — a concept Alva designed as the group was trying to think of ways to combat illegal file-sharing of their music. (The songs will also be available digitally.)

"It was just like, how the hell are we going to get people to buy a goddamn record, like without downloading it? What’s going to make them want to have something in their hands?," she said. "It’s really cool. It’s not, like, the funnest board game. It’s not like Monopoly. But it’s a good idea."

Girl in a Coma officially formed on Thanksgiving Day in 2000, borne out of a friendship between Alva and Phanie Diaz, who bonded over a shared love of Nirvana records and The Smiths’ "Louder Than Bombs" in junior high. They eventually recruited Phanie’s sister Nina, seven years their junior, to join as lead vocalist. But there was never any of the annoyance that one might expect from having a little sister tagging along, according to Alva.

"Phanie and I are still very much immature," she admitted. "Sometimes Nina’s a lot more mature than we are. The only time we thought about it is when we would go on tour and it’d be like, ‘She can’t come in until she sings.’ You know, she couldn’t go into the bars and stuff. That’s the only time we’d be like, fuck."

Alva, who lives with the Diaz’s parents and Nina, says sibling rivalry hardly ever comes into play and that the vibe in the group is more like all three are related.

"We’ve known each other so long," she said. "You know, we’re all sisters. So we all fight and we make up in like 10 minutes. Like, ‘Well, sorry. Ok. Move on.’ I think that’s one of the great benefits of us being so close is, you know, we fight but we get over it real quick."

With a diverse range of influences including Bjork, Smashing Pumpkins, Selena and ‘90s riot grrl acts like Bikini Kill to Selena, the band has cultivated a post-punk sound over the past decade. And even though they stop short of recording cover versions of his songs, they have shared the stage with their hero, Morrissey, who invited them to be his opening act for tour dates in the U.S. and Europe in 2007.

"That was great," gushed Alva, who characterized the tour as a learning experience. "It was just perfect, because we needed to do a big tour like that and to work with somebody that, you know, has influenced us, but to treat it more like, this is a business. We (were) representing our music. We’re going to come in and see how many of his fans can like us. I mean, that’s what you do as an opening act. It was just a great experience. … Being the opening act is fun. You know, it’s good to do the big one and get the big one out of the way, so that anything else that comes, it’s like, ‘Cool. We got it. We’ll do it.’"

They’ve also shared stages with Tegan & Sara, The Pogues and Social Distortion.

Currently, the members of Girl in a Coma are in the midst of two back-to-back tours — first with British indie rockers The Wedding Present and then with Australian singer Sia starting next week — that will take them across the country and back again. After being approached by both artists, they agreed to compromise and do half of each tour, Alva said.

"We were going to do the whole tour with (The Wedding Present), and then Sia came around," Alva explained. "We met her at the Michigan Womyn’s Fest. We actually woke her up. We had a really early sound check. It’s outdoors and everybody’s camping and stuff. It’s really cool. And they wanted us to come, like, at 8 and do our sound check. So we got there … and we did our sound check and then we got offstage. And (Sia) and a friend came up to us and they’re like, ‘Wow, that was really good. You woke us up, but we’re not really mad about it.’ … So, we kept in touch and she invited us to do her tour, so basically we asked both groups, would it be OK if (we did them both)."

Signed to Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records label, Girl in a Coma embodies the same girl power mentality of their mentor.

"I want to invite as many girls out there to start a group. I think the more we have, the better," Alva said. "I feel like a lot are popping up. … We’re meeting all-girl groups. It’s really cool. It would really be awesome if there just was this explosion. You know, you might as well."

Girl in a Coma tour dates:

4/20            Vancouver, BC                         The Biltmore Cabaret*

4/21            Seattle, WA                        The Crocodile Caf©*

4/22            Portland, OR                        Doug Fir*

4/25            Chicago, IL                        Vic Theatre**

4/26            Detroit, MI                        St. Andrews Hall**

4/30            Montreal, QC                        Club Soda**

5/1            Boston House of Blues**

5/2            Philadelphia, PA                        Theatre of the Living Arts**

5/4            Washington, DC                        9:30 Club**

5/5            Northampton            Pearl Street Ballroom**

5/6            New York, NY                        Terminal 5**

5/7            Richmond, VA                        The National**

5/15            Houston, TX                        Fitzgeralds

5/22            Austin, TX                        Pachanga Fest — Fiesta Gardens

5/28            San Antonio, TX                        Josabi’s Helotes

*w/ The Wedding Present

** w/ Sia

After a collective breakdown brought them to the brink of breakup in late 2007, Canadian quintet You Say Party! We Say Die! are staging a triumphant return with their third album, "XXXX," which was released in the United States in February. Already, 2010 has included two quasi-hometown performances at the Vancouver Olympics, an appearance at Austin’s SXSW festival, and their first U.S. shows with a full lineup since 2006, when O’Shea was banned from the country due to visa problems the band encountered at the border.

Shortly after the group kicked off a brief U.S. tour on the West Coast earlier this month, Blast spoke with frontwoman Becky Ninkovic, who said she and her bandmates were able to channel any negative energy that remained into the songs that comprise "XXXX."

"I think when you go through difficult times with people, it can really bring you closer together, and just establish a lot more trust and faith in each other. It definitely did that for us," she said emphatically.

The group formed in 2003 when most of the members were in their early 20s, according to Ninkovic. Drummer Devon Clifford and guitarist Derek Adam are childhood best friends and attended the same high school as Ninkovic and keyboardist Krista Loewen, but the true connection came from the band members all being fixtures on the local music scene in Abbotsford, a suburb of Vancouver. Their (oft-abbreviated as YSP! WSD!) name is taken from the title of one of their first songs, which would frequently turn into a back-and-forth chant with audience members in the group’s early days, when they were still nameless and most of their gigs consisted of casual performances at friends’ apartments.

"We really liked the idea of just getting to participate with the crowd … (to) create a feeling of us all being in it together instead of just being performers separate from the audience," she explained. "We just wanted it to be like a fun party. We were just playing in our hometown, little house parties and stuff, so it was more about just creating a fun atmosphere than anything."

Though Ninkovic maintains YSP! WSD! never had aspirations to play beyond those hometown shows, the success of their first two albums — 2005′s "Hit the Floor" and 2007′s "Lose All Time" — has led them down a different path.

It was during a grueling 16-week fall/winter 2007 tour of Canada and Europe that the tension that was building within the group came to a head. Afterwards, the band took some much-needed time off to re-evaluate, Ninkovic said.

"I think some of us definitely felt like that was gonna be the end," she admitted. "I know for me, I was definitely at the bottom, and unable to see how we could continue. But, fortunately, some of us were able to see how it could work. … And then, eventually, I began to see a lot more light and hope and future."

"There was a lot of recovery time needed after that tour, and through that process, I think we really discovered a new love for ourselves, each other, and the music, and just what we were in together," she added. "That was really what pulled us together. When we started writing, it just naturally began to come out in the songwriting process. So, we could all feel it, and we just kind of loved the magic that was happening, and just really wanted to capture that. (Producer) Howard (Redekopp) was amazing at being able to really tap into that energy."

The songs on "XXXX" contain elements of everything from blues to disco, but Ninkovic says the band, more so than on its previous records, was honing in on a sound that echoed 1980s New Wave and punk and early ‘90s dance in particular. She credits Redekopp, whose previous producing credits include fellow Canucks The New Pornographers and Tegan & Sara, for bringing their sonic vision to fruition.

"(Redekopp) really understood that aesthetic that we all love so much," she gushed. "We had so much more time to really focus on this album. We really had a lot of time to connect with Howard and just communicate all of our hopes and dreams for how we wanted it to sound, and really take the time to really give each song what it needed. In that way, it just became more of an accomplishment for us."

The album’s leadoff track in particular, "There is Xxxx (Within My Heart)," bears a striking resemblance to the 1993 dance hit "Show Me Love" by Robin S. Ninkovic readily acknowledged the similarity, but says it was entirely unintentional. She laughingly recalled her jaw dropping when Adam played her the Robin S. track in comparison to her own.

"My hope for that song was that it would kind of play on, like, dance mix ‘90s," she said, laughing. "I kind of had that era in the back of my mind, writing that song. I really wanted it to kind of have that feel to it. And when he found the song later, like after we’d already recorded it and everything, I was like, oh my God, amazing. It’s finally happened. I knew one of these days there’d be some subconscious leaking coming out."

As for the "X" motif in the title of the album itself and several songs, it was Ninkovic herself who came up with it, when she was creating artwork for the group’s first EP in 2004.

"I cut out these four paper Xs that I glued onto the artwork," she recalled. "At that time, I remember thinking L-O-V-E, X-X-X-X. And … when this album was coming together, there was this very obvious energy of love coming through. We were really wanting to honor that, but in a way that wasn’t going to be too blatantly obvious or clich©, as many sentiments to do with love often come across sounding. We were talking about it, and I remembered about the four Xs and how it was like my little secret code for love. And everybody really felt a connection with that."

YSP! WSD!’s renewed harmony and mutual respect also came through in the writing process, according to Ninkovic.

"We each write our own individual parts, but … we’ve been learning in the last year or so to try to kind of honor each other’s ideas and vision, and to be more flexible with each other," she said. "It’s always a learning process. And I think we definitely found that for this album. I think we just had a lot more openness towards each other, just in our own personal relationships, just in our hearts towards each other. So, coming into the writing room with that attitude just made the creative process so much more liberating."

Call it a comeback; call it a fresh start. Whatever the terminology, it’s clear that You Say Party! We Say Die! are embracing a new philosophy of dwelling on the future rather than the past.

"It feels really good to be back, and we worked so hard to get here," she said. "We’re very happy."

YSP! WSD! tour dates:

March 23                        Charlotte, NC                        Snug Harbour

March 24                        Baltimore, MD            Ottobar

March 26                        New York, NY            Knitting Factory

March 27                        Boston, MA                        TT the Bears

March 29                        New York, NY            Piano’s

March 30                        Detroit, MI                        Pike Room

March 31                        Chicago, IL                        Empty Bottle