Tom Lynch

Pop music is just so weird.

It can be the only thing you want to hear and, sometimes, the last thing you want to hear. It can devastate and illuminate; it can get you talking for hours or it can be the only thing to get you to shut up. "Do I listen to pop music because I’m depressed, or am I depressed because I listen to pop music?" questioned Rob Gordon. Probably both? Pop music, in its essence, makes you act and react, if effective, with reckless abandon. It changes lives, and has done so for decades and decades—pop music has the unparalleled ability to make you warm and cold at once, regardless of music quality. It makes new memories and kills old ones.

New York’s Robbers on High Street had a satisfying debut in 2005’s "Tree City"—pieces gritty, pieces heart-on-sleeve bewilderment, the trio had planted the seeds for a fine career. "Grand Animals," the band’s new record made me queasy when I first heard it. I listened again, immediately, and I loved it. Something changed, in me obviously and not the record. It wasn’t that I listened more carefully the second time around, either, or that it "grew on me," as that would certainly take more time. Pop music, pop music like this, can mean different things at different times for different people. Pop music is just so weird.

The first four songs are fabulous: the goofy, pitch-perfect opener "Across Your Knee" begins with alternating instruments singularly introducing themselves; "The Fatalist" is a Police-like venture in pop construction; followed by the solid, hoppy "Crown Victoria," and then the gentle, quick piano ballad "The Ramp," which helps close out a muscle-bound first third. The lyrics are quite literate—not quite like the work of Colin Meloy, this is storytelling of a separate order, a bit more willing to put the humor out in front rather than bury it beneath the subtext.

"When we first started writing, the songs just kind of happened," Ben Trokan, frontman, says. "I think we had an idea—we knew that we wanted the production to be different [than on "Tree City"]. We wanted to think smaller, a bit more…just leaving more room, the songs a bit more intimate. It kind of worked out that the songs we had worked with that sort of style."

Trokan says that the band consciously tried to avoid any sort of processed pop feel, as far as the recording was concerned. "I usually make a lot of demos, and there the songs are usually a little more lo-fi," Trokan says. "We liked the feel of that—we wanted to match that, not have things too compressed and too slick. We have a lot of seventies references with our music—[we wanted to keep] the production similar."

Of course, the "sophomore slump" looms on. Sometimes the pressure builds and builds right up until the band delivers a terrible second record (The Killers’ "Sam’s Town"), or the band embraces the building tension and changes its own dynamic entirely (Radiohead’s "The Bends," in which the title of the record explains everything clearly, brilliantly). Trokan, though, says he was having none of it. "I didn’t feel any pressure or anything in terms of the sophomore record," he says. "I didn’t feel I was under pressure to deliver a masterpiece or anything. I think the only pressure [came from] myself, to write better songs, to challenge myself in the writing."

He admits his New York home lends a lot to his songwriting. "I think it just informs me," he says. "[You can] reach a lot of stuff from the environment, lyrically, in songs. I usually write about stories I hear, people I know. I live in New York, I was born there. It’s a big part of me."

Trokan says the band already has enough new material to create a new record. "Yeah, honestly we have enough stuff already," he says. "We wrote these songs [on "Grand Animals"], finished writing in 2005 and spent all last year getting ready to make the record." The time must be excruciating. "It’s driving me crazy," he says. "So this is the sort of time when I’m itching to do something, when I’m writing a bunch of songs."

Robbers on High Street play July 10 at Schubas, 3159 North Southport, (773)525-2508, at 9pm. $10.

(2007-07-02)

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