Blonde on blonde

In the absence of Lollapalooza and Lilith, the fallback strategy in a beleaguered concert market is to lash together several bands but not call it a festival. One way to do this involves the seemingly random collision of name-brand acts with bands that are good for you. (Think back a few summers to R.E.M.’s taking Sonic Youth on tour, a setup that on paper reeked of forced integrity — and on stage just reeked.)

The New York City-based trio Blonde Redhead has been compared with Sonic Youth. But on its fifth album, the newly issued Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, the group adds to its command of controlled cacophony bits of gentle cooing, handclaps, and Clockwork Orange synthesizers. The result is indie music as good for you as spinach but that’s actually fun to listen to, like Superchunk covering Barry Manilow.

Guitarist/singer Amedeo Pace admits that the decision to embark on a cross-country junket with a couple of party bands caused Blonde Redhead members to lose some sleep. “I don’t know if it’s the biggest decision we’ve ever made,” Pace says from his apartment in New York. “The biggest decisions we make are when we’re writing and recording music. But we had to think about it and reflect if it was something that would be good, satisfying musically. We try to avoid anything that would endanger our well-being together, especially on tour.”

Hanging around with Flea and Dave Grohl not good for a tenderhearted ensemble? Come on, Pace, snap out of it!

Chili Pepper John Frusciante, who, like his bandmates, is a Redhead fan, got hold of Pace’s home number two months ago to personally ask that the group join their summer tour. “I had met John before on the street maybe seven months ago,” Pace says. “I’ve never met the Foo Fighters.

“I spoke to John and asked what he thought about it. He said it might be really difficult. We don’t play the sort of driving music their fans might want. But he was very honest. He told me examples of bands that they loved who got booed when (the Peppers) tried to expose them to their audience. He was so cool about that. They are really trying to bring good music for themselves and to expose bigger crowds to it, so I thought, ‘Let’s try it.'”

Pace says he and his bandmates, twin brother Simone and singer/guitarist Kazu Makino, haven’t thought enough about the gigs to get nervous … yet. “But I know I will,” he adds. He asks about the capacity of Sandstone Amphitheatre, where the Foos/Redhead leg of the Peppers’ tour kicks off. Given a description of the venue, he pauses, then quietly says, “Jesus.”

“We never tried this before,” Pace says of facing larger audiences. “But at this point, that’s what it’s about: trying something new. I think it will be good for us, a challenge.”

The group just returned from a European tour that debuted the Damaged Lemons material during longer sets than it has played before. Pace says the three try to stay spontaneous, choosing setlists each night and writing on the road. Their hope is to compose at least one new song this time out to give audiences something unexpected.

The writing process is crucial to Blonde Redhead. The trio spent much of the two-year layover between discs working on songs, and this time they came down with what Pace calls a bad case of “demo-itis.”

“Some of what we came to the studio with was skeletal; some was formed. We taped a lot of stuff … then figured out what we liked. But at the beginning, we liked the demos so much that we became very frustrated. (Co-producers) Guy Picciotto and Ryan Hadlock had to talk to us while we freaked out.”

Pace describes these events in his calm, high voice, which betrays very little of his Italian accent. He and his brother moved from Italy to Montreal at age 13, then immigrated to the U.S. to study at Berklee in Boston. (Bandmate Makino hails from Japan.) Pace talks slowly and with certainty, casually referring to the good things he and the band have encountered as having caused “fulfillment” or “satisfaction.” He throws those words around like a car salesman hashing out a follow-up questionnaire with a customer, a man on a quest for “complete” or “total” or “artistic” fulfillment. Also, Pace sounds incapable of being truly freaked out.

“We ended up keeping some vocals from the early mixes because some stuff we demo comes out naturally well,” Pace says. “But we only had 20 days to record, mix, and even do the artwork, so we can’t overdo anything because of the budget.”

On this day off, 12 hours after arriving from dates in Italy, Belgium, France, and, for the first time, Ireland, Pace is playing back a new remix that he expects the band will release in August as part of an EP. He’s drawing, something he claims is not for public consumption. “I make these drawings and enlarge them, then paint them. It’s just for fun, another way to let it out besides music,” he says.

“The EP will have two remixes and one new song, probably five things altogether,” Pace says. “We did an instrumental song for a John Peel session in England, which will be on the radio there a couple of times.” The legendary Peel show remains a magnet for a richly varied lineup of performers who play live on his broadcast, but Pace is nonchalant. “I really didn’t know how important it was until we got there. It wasn’t a moment when I knew we had arrived.”

That time came instead, Pace says, at a party a few years ago. “They played one of our songs on a huge sound system, ‘Rocks Off.’ It’s from our second album, but this didn’t happen for several years after that album came out. People were dancing. It sounded so crazy and good and distorted. I was very relaxed hearing it, watching people have a good time with it. I felt completely fulfilled.”

Blonde Redhead
with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters

Wednesday, June 28
at Sandstone Amphitheatre