Bart Davenport blames Diana Ross for his failed romances. "No woman has ever told me, 'Whenever you're near me, I hear a symphony,'" he says from his apartment in Berkeley, California, the college town where the singer-songwriter was born and raised. "Music has always been there for me -- relationships have failed."

Davenport -- who is the son of a musician, worked at both of Berkeley's cavernous record stores and fronted two of the Bay Area's mightiest Nineties club bands -- is not overstating the role of music in his life . . . or his wounded heart, as a recent breakup fueled his shimmering soft-rock song cycle, Maroon Cocoon.

Built around Davenport's own nifty acoustic fretwork and soulful vocals, the twelve tracks are a marriage of sour memories and sunny melodies. The opening ballad, "Welcome to the Show," is drenched in Bee Gees-esque harmonies ("That one is very Cucumber Castle," he admits). "Clara" is an affectionate goodbye over a bossa-nova beat, while the bouncy pop gem "Finishing School" pulls far less punches: "Studying evil in finishing school/Who taught the girl how to be so cruel?"

On "Into Music," Davenport travels the rocky terrain of fathers and sons, and manages to brighten the regretful verses (sung as if from his dad to him, as well as from him to "the child I've never had") with the charmingly naive chorus "Let me tell you kid what your daddy did/He was really into music."

"My songs are cries for love," Davenport admits. "I guess I put them in the public arena because others' songs have always evoked emotion for me where real life couldn't . . . When Kurt Cobain killed himself, I thought, 'Wow, that was dumb.' Then I heard a marching band playing '(Smells Like) Teen Spirit,' and it reduced me to tears."

Davenport talks like a rock star, dresses like a rock star and darn near became one nearly a decade ago. After dissolving Mod revivalists the Loved Ones, who released two albums on Hightone Records in '93 and '94, Davenport formed the Kinetics. The blue-eyed soul bearers transcended the San Francisco's incestuous indie-rock scene by taking their dance grooves to stylish supper clubs. "We were like a mainstream act," Davenport says, "but we were only mainstream in the Bay Area."

The Kinetics were offered a major-label record deal, which they turned down, thinking a better one was on the horizon. "A few months later, we came back with our tails between our legs," Davenport says. "We were like, 'Uh, do you still have that deal?'" But this time the label passed, and, following guitarist Xan McCurdy's defection to Cake, the band imploded. "It sort of became Lord of the Flies," Davenport says. "We fired each other until there was no one left."

Davenport's biggest regret from those days is not that he missed a shot at commercial success, but that he wasn't productive enough. Although the Kinetics recorded two albums' worth of demos, the sum of their commercial output was one five-song EP. "Now, I don't care if I'm on the tiniest label," says Davenport, who has released three albums in four years on such imprints as Paris Caramel and Antenna Farm. "I just want my music to be out there. I'm done chasing the brass ring."

Unlike 2003's Game Preserve, a multi-tracked rock record birthed in a studio with an impressive cast of backing musicians, Maroon Cocoon was recorded in Davenport's apartment on an eight-track. "It's a peaceful atmosphere to make music in," he says. "It's breezy, and a little walk up a hill brings you to a rose garden."

A life-long fan of the raucous side of the British Invasion, Davenport was influenced this time around by the homemade coziness of the likes of Paul McCartney's early solo albums. "Now that I'm in my thirties, I've become inspired by what these guys did after their classic years," he says. "I'm finding myself connecting more with 'Young Turks' than the Faces [laughs] . . . and more with Phil Collins and less with Genesis."

As for finding the peace in life that he's found in music, Davenport is not optimistic. Besides, happiness might spoil his songwriting. "Does suffering keep me flowing?" he asks. "I don't know . . . but I plan to keep exploring that."