At thirty-eight, Everclear frontman Art Alexakis is nearly twice the age of his closest pop chart rivals. But when his group's fourth album, Songs From An American Movie, Volume 1: Learning How To Smile, recently crashed the Billboard 200 at No. 9, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Eminem to 'N Sync, the singer-songwriter didn't let it go to his head. Instead, he stayed holed-up at the same Los Angeles studio where the members of Everclear have been spending most of their waking hours lately -- working on their next album.

Alexakis says the band has made considerable progress on Songs From an American Movie, Volume 2: Good Time for a Bad Attitude, which should be out by early November if everything goes according to plan. Crass? Self-indulgent? Commercially suicidal? Alexakis shrugs it all off. His reasons for the one-two punch are more simple. "We haven't put out a record in three years, so I've got a lot of songs," he explains. "I guess I'm prolific, but I always thought I was Greek-Irish."

The Northwestern trio is still riding high on the success of its last album, 1997's So Much for the Afterglow, which spun out a seemingly endless run of alternative radio hits, including "Father of Mine" and "Everything to Everyone." The songs for Learning How to Smile were originally intended for Alexakis' solo debut, but when the songwriter returned from spending nearly a solid year on the road with Everclear, he discovered the music lacked the required vitality, so he called in bassist Craig Montoya and drummer Greg Eklund and made it a group project. "It's really become an Everclear album in all senses of the word," Alexakis says. "It just felt like the songs needed it. I'm not like Hitchcock, where I storyboard everything. I like going into the studio and leave things open so cool things can happen."

Indeed, Learning How to Smile veers considerably from the band's reliable pop-rock formula, incorporating distinct strain of classic R&B. Consider the soulful cover of Van Morrison's 1967 hit "Brown Eyed Girl," while forthcoming single "AM Radio" does a Puff Daddy caliber sampling job of Jean Knight's 1971 smash "Mr. Big Stuff." It's only later into the album, where the usual darkness and despair begins to surface.

For example, the first single, "Wonderful," which is buried towards the end of the disc, recounts a divorce as seen through a child's eyes in heartbreaking detail. Alexakis, whose parents separated when he was six, divorced his wife last year, splitting custody of his eight-year-old daughter, Annabella.

"I think it's important to keep grounded, whether you have bad times or good times," Alexakis says. "You need to remember where you came from and where you still are. I feel that twenty-one-year-old that almost died of a heroin overdose is still inside of me. A lot of that confusion for him is still there. Me, as a thirty-eight-year-old, I figured out how not to take a lot of that stuff so seriously, but I think that confused little boy is in there. I think this album speaks to the different kids that are within me and within all of us."

Alexakis promises Good Time for a Bad Attitude, a purportedly heavier rock album, will offer a closer look at the intense emotional trauma he has gone through. Barring a few dates here and there, the band is not planning a full-scale tour until the next record comes out, at which time it plans to do a more theatrical production. It's all part of the master plan of eventually spending less time on the road and more in the studio. "We don't have to go out and play six shows a week anymore," Alexakis says. "It's not a question of whether it's hard or not -- it's just that I refuse to."

AIDIN VAZIRI
(July 31, 2000)