"Have you noticed," Nate Albert is saying, "that on every comedy show, or every commercial that's supposed to be funny, the soudtrack is ska-core? Have you noticed this? I was watching America's Funniest Home Videos, and it's like the whole soundtrack is ska-core. And I'm thinking, `Is this what we gave to the world?' "

It's a Wednesday evening a week or so after the Kickovers' debut show, and Albert is reclining in the living room of his cozy Cambridge, Massachusetts condo with his old friend and new bassist Mikey Welsh. The gold and platinum albums he earned with the Bosstones are tucked away in the basement. A wall of shelves in an adjacent room, where you'd expect to see his record collection, is instead lined with books. A fireplace crackles. And Nate Albert is talking about the idea of finding balance in his life.

"I miss those guys -- I miss the Bosstones. I don't miss the traveling, but I miss hanging out. I see them when they're around, but we were like a family, with all the dysfunction that implies. I don't miss 300 shows a year. Thirty shows a year sounds good to me. I'd rather just be a little more normal in terms of scheduling things, like your life. My plants are living. I had a cactus that died when I was in the Bosstones."

He has no regrets about leaving the Bosstones, but he has no regrets about his time in the band either. "The whole experience was great, but by the time everything was happening, I was already pretty sure I wanted to do other stuff, too. I didn't want to go on cruise control. Having done the experience, it's like, well, what else do you want?

"I went back to school. I ran a marathon a month ago. I really wanted to do that. I wanted to have a dog. And there she is, Luna" -- this as his pooch moseys in.

Right now Albert is working on integrating his love of rock and roll with his passion for scholarship. "What I'd like to do -- the goal of my life -- is just to merge the two, where they're seamless: where I can do more thoughtful stuff and also do music. The music is incredibly thoughtful, but there's a point where it kicks in and you're just presenting every night. I'd like to have both working at the same time."

What's perhaps most remarkable about the Kickovers is that Albert found the perfect compatriots for pursuing the dream of rock and roll on a manageable scale. Welsh was fresh from the Weezer roller-coaster, a rocky ride to the top that landed him briefly "in the nut house." Former Bosstones manager Ami Bennitt was coaxed out of semi-retirement. And former Grand Royal honcho Mark Kates -- who before being involved with Nirvana and the Beastie Boys got his start working with Mission of Burma -- decided to move back to Boston and sign the band to his newly minted Fenway Recordings label. "It's exciting because his label is new too," says Albert. "So there's this back-and-forth of ideas. We're all trying to build something together."

The Kickovers' Osaka begins at a broil with a 15-second hardcore fit in which Albert's scream -- in total, "I'm plastic/I'm plastic/I'm plastic!" -- conveys the claustrophobia of becoming a musical commodity. But the album quickly segues into a series of smartly executed, power-pop-infused hard-rock songs, ranging from the full-on thrash of "Heart Attack" to the country-inflected "Crash and Burn." "There are some songs that lyrically I really worked on," says Albert. "Like `Regeneration,' where the first line is a reference to the Joe Jackson biography [A Cure for Gravity], then there's a reference to a Radiohead movie [Meeting People Is Easy], and then there's a reference to a Paul Westerberg solo record ["World Class Fad"]. It's all about these people being disenchanted with a certain lifestyle you're supposed to dig."

For the moment, his own slanted disenchantment has lifted. "What I enjoy is being up there and being so hyper-aware. It's like when I was younger and playing guitar; you felt like you were so sensitive to everyone around you and what's going on."

You get a sense of this on Osaka's last song, where the singer finally finds "The Good Life": "How should I begin?/Let's start with the fact that somehow I can feel again." "Mikey and I were talking about Behind the Music, and I was saying how I really like the last 10 minutes of each episode -- that whole `pumped up' segment. I want our career to be that: our whole career, just those last 10 minutes."

The Kickovers play the Met Cafe on Wednesday, April 10, with Local H and Chevelle. Call (401) 861-2142

Issue Date: April 5 - 11, 2002