"One kid wrote me, 'I heard you're making a pop record! What are you going to do -- dance around like Britney Spears?'" relates Everclear front man Art Alexakis, sitting outside the L.A. studio where he's finishing up the group's next album. "I replied, 'Go get a Beatles album!' She said, 'Who?'"

Alexakis, celebrating his thirty-eighth birthday on this April afternoon, shakes his head. If this fan hadn't heard of the Beatles, what about Otis Redding, Van Morrison or Jean Knight's 1970s hit "Mr. Big Stuff"? All turn up either in name or as an influence on this new album, Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 1/Learning How to Smile, reflecting the fact that Alexakis pines for the days when the term pop meant more than boy-band harmonies and bared midriffs.

"This album is about my divorce -- though it's not really autobiographical," he says, referring to his split with his wife last year. The album started as a solo project about a year and a half ago, at a time when the band's third album, 1997's So Much for the Afterglow, was steadily on its way to a solid 2.1 million in sales. "I played a couple of the tracks for the other guys," Alexakis says of Everclear bassist Craig Montoya and drummer Greg Eklund. "They said, 'We like these. Could we play on them?'" Alexakis retooled those songs with Montoya and Eklund, and liked the extra oomph that they provided so much, he brought them in for the rest of the album.

In the studio, Alexakis has co-producers Neal Avron and Lars Fox play back "Thrift Store Chair" to see whether it needs some tweaking. It's clear that this is something different, from the opening folk-style acoustic guitar to the lyrics chronicling a relationship in midcrumble to the last fade of an accordion. Other songs rock more like the Everclear we know -- especially the first single, "Wonderful," a look at a breakup through the all-too-seeing eyes of a kid. Throughout, the album retains Alexakis' original vision; the playful "Here We Go Again" is complemented by horns, and "Annabella," a baldly sentimental ode to Alexakis' daughter, includes an orchestra arranged and conducted by Frank Sinatra associate Mort Lindsey.

Outside of recording, Alexakis' activities have turned to broken homes as well: Recently he testified before the House of Representatives in support of legislation that would turn over to the IRS the task of collecting from deadbeat dads. Also, he has started a label, Popularity Records, which will be distributed through Artemis Records.

After listening to "Thrift Store Chair," Alexakis turns to Avron and Fox and says, "I can't really hear the squeezebox. Can we turn it up a little?" Later he acknowledges that some fans may feel the same way about the whole album. He has a response for them -- wait till November. That's when he plans to release Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 2, with a harder rock edge denoted in its subtitle, Good Time for a Bad Attitude. That set will be recorded with Everclear shortly after Vol. 1 is ready. "Some will think the first one is too soft and some that the second one is too hard," he says. "I think they both sound like Everclear."

STEVE HOCHMAN
(May 19, 2000)