Back to the future

The Dambuilders reveal their new-wave soul on Against the Stars

by Matt Ashare

There's nothing quite like the feeling of excitement, anticipation, and, yes, euphoria that can overcome a local rock scene when one of its own seems to be on the verge of making it. Even in the cynical '90s, a decade in which merely uttering the words "Been there, done that" falls under the category of "Been there, done that," this feeling has been known to arise. And though success has been known to breed a certain contempt among grassroots fans, particularly in the realm of alternative rock, there's still a moment -- a period of months, weeks, or just days -- when good will runs rampant and the feeling of hope is almost tangible.

With a relatively big-budget major-label disc due in August (produced by Don Gehman of R.E.M./Hootie and the Blowfish notoriety), a coveted slot on the Lollapalooza second stage, and a video shoot scheduled for upstairs at the Middle East rock club in Cambridge, that sense of possibility, of forward momentum, settled not too long ago on Boston's Dambuilders. The stars were aligning themselves favorably for a challenging yet accessible foursome who, in the tradition of the Pixies and Throwing Muses, had found the Boston club scene to be an ideal place to launch a band with a distinct sound that anticipated rather than followed the trends. Unfortunately, the year was 1995 (back when Lollapalooza second-stage slots actually were coveted) not 1997. And within six months it was clear that the disc in question, Ruby Red (Elektra), was over before it had ever got started, the initial enthusiasm surrounding its release having been replaced by a vaguely unsettling disappointment.

Stories like that aren't even a dime a dozen in the music business. And more often than not this is where they end, with the label dropping the band, the members parting ways, and nothing but the occasional sighting of someone wearing one of the group's T-shirts at a show to remind you that it actually happened. No big deal, particularly in the Dambuilders' case, where each member had other musical irons in the fire by the time Ruby Red had petered out. But the Dambuilders are back two years later with the aptly titled Against the Stars, a new Elektra album that comes out on Tuesday (July 29), a disc that finds them confidently taking the kind of musical risks they shied away from on Ruby Red. It's easily the best release of their career.

A lot has happened with this band since Ruby Red. Singer/bassist Dave Derby, drummer Kevin March, and violinist Joan Wasser (who now also plays guitar and keyboards, live and on the CD) all moved to New York, leaving guitarist Eric Masunaga behind as their only Boston representative. They also parted ways with their former manager and booking agent. More important, they've all been active outside the Dambuilders. March, an outstanding drummer who's become something of an alterna-rock session dude, played and toured behind the new Shudder To Think disc, 50,000 B.C. (Epic), earlier this year, recorded a Rentals album with former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp (due in January from Maverick), and was brought in by producer Ted Nicely to drum on tunes from recent CDs by Australia's Frente and Sweden's Cinnamon. He also teamed up with Wasser, Helium's Mary Timony, and Shudder To Think guitarist Nathan Larson in the indie-rock all-star outfit Mind Science of the Mind, who released a homonymous debut on Epic last year and are planning to start work on a new one later this year.

Meanwhile, Wasser has been playing with Grifters guitarist Dave Shouse in a band called Those Bastard Souls, who toured as an opening act for Sebadoh earlier this year. She also went on the road with Timony, opening for Pavement in a duo incarnation of Helium, and has been lending her skills to NYC-based singer/songwriter Morley Kamen, who is currently recording a debut CD for Sony's Work Group. Derby, who routinely records his tunes on a four-track, released a solo disc (Vainglory) under the name Brilliantine a couple months ago and has been playing shows in Boston and New York, as well as collaborating with the NYC-based British singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole and working on the score to an independent film. As for Masunaga, aside from producing Against the Stars, he has put his considerable studio talents to work producing discs by Halifax's the Super Friendz (Slide Show, on Murder) and Boston's Push Kings, the latter of which came out on Masunaga's own indie label, Sealed Fate. All of which goes a long way toward explaining the degree of confidence that's reflected in Against the Stars.

"I think working with other people gave us all a new perspective on what's special about the Dambuilders," says March, on the phone from Elektra's New York office. "It really made us appreciate what we have together."

Derby echoes those sentiments and elaborates in a separate phone conversation. "We're just feeling better about our lives these days. I think we had a pretty difficult time doing Ruby Red for a lot of reasons that aren't worth bringing up. Then last year we went down to Australia, where the album had done really well, and we had some great shows. I think we came together and realized how much our band means to us individually and collectively, and how much potential we had. It brought us back to doing what we knew we could do well, and I think it made us less afraid of what the word `pop' means. It was really kind of a turning point."

The Dambuilders' decision to embrace their inner pop sensibility comes through clearly on Against the Stars. But not immediately. The disc opens with what I'm tempted to call a classic Dambuilders number (in the same way that I once thought of "Debaser" as a classic jolt of punkish energy from the Pixies on Doolittle), a tune that's more about momentum than melody. (Indeed, the song, "Digitized," was written during the soundcheck right before the band played it at a WMBR Pipeline broadcast several years ago.) Powered by March's muscular beat and noisy bursts from Masunaga's serrated guitar and Wasser's staccato violin, the tune allows only occasional glimpses of melody lurking just beneath the jagged surface.

But hooks and melodies come to the fore on the next series of tracks, which finally make good on the anthemic-pop promise of Ruby Red's rousing "Drive-By Kiss" and the band's 1993-'94 college radio hit "Shrine." "Break Up with Your Boyfriend" is a buoyant, driving, tuneful ode to going out on a romantic limb ("Break up with your boyfriend/He'll never give you what you need") that wouldn't have been out of place on the soundtrack to any of John Hughes's wonderful teensploitation flicks in the '80s. This is followed by "Burn This Bridge," the break-up song, which crests on a powerful chorus of overdriven guitars; it features Derby risking a little falsetto on the bridge (and pulling it off), Wasser on guitar, and a radio-ready hook. That's the disc's first single, and the beginning of a string of tunes, one right after the other, that would easily work as follow-up singles -- "Her Story," "Might Want Me Around," and "You'll Never Know."

The disc then takes an abrupt left turn into what we'll refer to as the "new wave" section, with Wasser taking over on vocals and Masunaga's studio savvy bolstering what sound like vintage tracks from the slickly wound-up '80s. "Itch It" (which Wasser tells me was originally titled "New Wave") is a bouncy number with a tough, rubbery bass line, gorgeous vocals from someone who's never sung lead vocals on a Dambuilders tune, and a bristling sexual undercurrent ("Be my aphrodisiac" is the salient line).

"I was receiving signals from my friends who were like, `Joan, we expect something more from you this time,' " recalls Wasser. "And I realized that I had been holding back a lot in the past because I was scared to sing. So this record was a real musical rebirth for me."

Indeed, Wasser is more or less transformed into a full-fledged Studio 54-style disco diva against a glittery backdrop of synth blips and beeps and a trip-hoppish groove on "Luster." Coupled with the disco-fied "Discopolis," it's a tune that takes the Dambuilders (with tongues only partly in cheek) farther from rock and closer in a way to their roots than ever before.

"We'd always joked about making a disco or new-wave album," admits Masunaga, who recorded the tracks for Against the Stars on ADAT machines in the basement of March's old Jamaica Plain apartment last summer, dumped them onto a computer, and eventually mixed the results with Robbie Adams (who worked with Flood on U2's Zooropa) in New York. (In fact, aside from a prominent violin solo, Against the Star's closing number, "Wished on the Wrong Star," offers hints of U2's soul-searching postmodern pop.)

"I definitely wouldn't have had the kind of leeway I had to work on this record with any other band," Masunaga continues. "I mean, being in the band and having worked on so many recordings with this band before was what allowed this process to happen. It was a pretty ideal situation, the kind of thing you always dream about and say, `If we could only do this, then we'd be able to make a great record.' "

One thing Masunaga and the rest of the band all agree on is that Against the Stars is a make-or-break release for the Dambuilders. And whether it makes or breaks the band will have as much to do with the way the stars align themselves as anything else. But however things turn out, the Dambuilders can at least claim victory in the part of the process they did have control over -- recapturing the creative spirit that seemed to dissipate in the wake of Ruby Red. As Masunaga puts it, "God knows, in the last couple of years it seems like anyone who could pick up a guitar and say, `Let's make a band,' has picked up a guitar and said, `Let's make a band.' We knew we had something special that went beyond that, and we just wanted to make one record that proved it."