The loyalty of Velvet Crush fans will be tested over the next year, as the duo unleashes a torrent of material. First up for the band is a new studio album, planned for a spring 2004 release, that will be followed by the group's first tour in six years.

After a slight change in direction, aptly captured by the title of the group's 2002 release Soft Sounds, Velvet Crush have gotten back to the power pop sound that they've produced for the better part of two decades. "The new one is definitely very rock and loud -- all electric guitars and stuff," says drummer Ric Menck. "I'm happy to do it again, and we do it well. But when you're an artist, you're also trying to do some other things and see what you can get away with. Try to stretch your vocabulary. Soft Sounds was good for us, but the most natural thing for us is to play loud melodic pop songs."

Menck returned to the band's home turf of Champaign, Illinois, to join bassist/singer Paul Chastain. The duo enlisted a handful of local music pals to fill out the album's sound. And according to Menck, though the set returns to the power pop formula, it's also mutated to reflect a grown-up sensibility. "To me it doesn't sound like the Raspberries or Big Star or all those bands that we always get compared to," he says. "I don't think it's a kid rock record -- we're not interested in making those anymore. It's more directed towards people our age, who are still in to the pop-rock guitar thing."

Augmenting the next studio album will be an onslaught of reissues from various Crush-related projects that had short life spans. Menck's terrific 1996 solo album, The Ballad of Ric Menck, has been padded with some bonus material and will be re-introduced in January. "A lot of people ask about it," he says, "which always astonishes me because I always think of it as baby pictures."

That release will be followed by Velvet Crush's Shitty Bootleg, which collects live material from a variety of shows, from headlining shows at smaller clubs to opening gigs at larger venues. Also in the queue is Happy Forest, a recording by the Reverbs, an early Menck band. "We were heavily influenced by bands like R.E.M. and the Bongos and the dBs and those Southern pop bands that were happening," he says. "We were obsessed with those records and naively tried to make something that was comparable. When I listen to it, it sounds not even close. But it was from a time where I felt so inspired by bands that I wanted to do it myself."

On Chastain's end will be the first release of Demo Reel, a fourteen-track set that is exactly what the title indicates, and a reissue of Shampoo Banana, a retrospective by Chastain's Eighties' group, the Nines.

"There's a bit of anxiety just because the music is from so early on," Menck says. "But I have enough distance from it and we've done enough since then, so it's acceptable for me to throw it out again. Maybe people will appreciate it for the qualities I'm sensitive about, like the naivete or the crude sound."

With the past so thoroughly cleaned out, Menck and Chastain seem comfortably poised to look ahead. "Our intention is to literally keep going until one of us drops," Menck says. "So hopefully it'll go on for awhile."

Which leaves the promise of tour dates, which Menck says are likely to begin next summer. "I can't wait, actually," he says. "In the old days, it got to be pretty good when we played live, so I'm sure we can get it back there. I'm excited to play the old songs again."

ANDREW DANSBY
(November 10, 2003)