Smile Downplays Manifesto Destiny

Mike Rosas likes to do his thinking out loud. Very loud.

But ramming home ideas at high volume with Smile, the Orange County modern-rock trio he has fronted since 1991, doesn’t mean Rosas always stands behind what he sings. Sometimes he’s just trying on those thoughts for size.

The tiny, soft-spoken, chipmunk-cute guitarist and his only slightly less-diminutive bandmates, drummer Scott Reeder and bassist Bob Thomson, took pains during a recent interview at their Costa Mesa rehearsal studio to make it clear that, contrary to anything you might glean from their new album, “Girl Crushes Boy,” they really, really like living in Orange County.

As for “Peach and Brown,” an acute, eight-minute skewering of the materialistic suburban mind-set that is one of many highlights on Smile’s catchy, adventurous second album--well, that’s what can happen when you do your thinking out loud. The song’s title alludes to a common architectural color scheme in Irvine, where Rosas grew up.

Peach and brown, that’s my town

Stay away, stay away if you know what’s good for you.

Live to shop and raise your kids

To meet your goals, and sell their souls to rock ‘n’ roll . . .

It’s what we get for being lazy.

“I had a problem with it because of the lyrics,” Rosas, 25, admitted. “They sounded like more of a statement than I wanted to make. But I gave up and decided I shouldn’t have a problem with it because it was a cool song anyway.

“There are places like that everywhere, cookie-cutter suburban communities,” he said. “Which I love, by the way. Don’t think for a minute I’m shunning it. I love the mall. I love Orange County.”

“There’s a lot of people who put it down, but I think it’s really cool,” added Reeder, 27, who grew up in Barstow and viewed Orange County as the promised land when he moved here in 1989.

At 30, Thomson is one of the more experienced and road-tested modern rockers the O.C. scene has produced. He’s been at it since he was a founding member of the respected Big Drill Car in 1986, and he takes pride in being about as Costa Mesan as you can get.

“I tell Bob, ‘Damn, I’m envious you grew up in Costa Mesa,’ ” noted Reeder, who has nothing kind to say about Barstow.

OK. But then how is it that Smile makes its big statement with a song that, though not so blatantly outspoken as Rikk Agnew’s scathing, 1982 punk classic “O.C. Life,” could serve as its bookend in kicking O.C. right in one of its most vulnerable--and at least partly truthful--stereotypes?

The answer, said Rosas, is that, he doesn’t want “Peach and Brown” to be taken as a “statement”--important as it is reflecting the band’s growing ambition and confidence as it weaves melodic hooks, attractive, shifting guitar tones and deftly structured episodic musical ideas.

“A lot of the lyrics are instant, first feelings that aren’t really thought through,” he said. “Maybe I don’t stand behind them 100%, but it really helps me think about what I’m feeling.

“A song can be just like a person. You should see the moods and different sides and dimensions. People have so much going on, and the music should as well. An album shouldn’t be a manifesto or anything etched in stone that you swallow and live your life according to it.”

Rosas’ other main lyrical theme is more straightforward, as reflected in the album title.

“There’s a pattern I find myself getting in with relationships, getting to a point where I feel stuck and trapped and you want to do anything besides hanging out with your girlfriend.”

Slippery, Contradictory

Smile always has seemed kind of slippery and contradictory. Its promising 1994 debut album, “Maquee,” featured songs that cast a jaundiced, disaffected eye on the culture of hit-spawning modern rock.

Yet smack in the middle of it was “Staring at the Sun,” a stately, melodic-grunge artifact that virtually distilled the elements that were enabling Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots to climb the charts.

“ ‘Staring at the Sun’ was one of the first songs I ever wrote on my own,” Rosas said. “I wasn’t aware enough of what I was doing to be able to make any keen observations on the world of pop culture. It was just looking at my friends and me.”

Rosas originally recorded the song in 1990 and put it out as a single; he released it under the band name Smile, not wanting to be a solo artist.

Soon he added some players from his alma mater, Woodbridge High, including bassist Aaron Sonnenburg, who stayed with the band until early this year, leaving after “Girl Crushes Boy” was finished. Reeder was recruited in 1992 via a musician-wanted ad.

Smile’s luck ran hot in its early days. The trio had started playing at Linda’s Doll Hut and informal warehouse parties. O, the front man of O.C./San Diego band Fluf, came to a gig and recommended Smile to Fluf’s label, Cargo/Headhunter. “Maquee” appeared in the fall of 1994, taking its name from the nickname of Reeder’s best buddy from Barstow.

“We thought it would be a good way to confound people and prompt questions,” the drummer recalled.

Within months, Smile had graduated to a major label, signed by Atlantic Records, which reissued “Maquee” in mid-1995 and sent the band off on several tours, including slots opening for Everclear and Silverchair. “Staring at the Sun” got airplay on modern-rock stations, and Smile stayed on tour for more than half a year.

But the Cinderella story hit a pumpkin patch when Atlantic, as often happens with large record companies, went through a management shake-up. The people who had signed and promoted the band were either gone or moved to other jobs, and Smile wound up having to work with an artist & repertoire executive they felt didn’t understand the band.

“Girl Crushes Boy” was recorded for Atlantic in 1996-97, but, discouraged by delays in the process, Smile’s members asked to be released from their contract. Being set free gave them time to re-record three excellent songs they were dissatisfied with--”The Best Years,” “Too Many Reasons” and “So Different Now”--and to add an additional track, “This Freaky Slow Dance,” that reflected the band’s frustrating experience with Atlantic.

The new album broadened Smile’s approach, adding synthesizers and organ for extra color, and deftly varying guitar tones to help lend a sense of complexity and allow songs to flow and develop rather than being locked into static riffs.

Among the sources echoing through various songs at various times are Sonic Youth and Pink Floyd, the taut, austere attack of English post-punk band Wire, the aggressive-yet-lilting pop-rock of Matthew Sweet and the heart-on-sleeve emotionalism and hefty punch of Foo Fighters.

Smile auditioned for other big labels after leaving Atlantic, but decided that the courting game could consume another year or more without an album coming out. So it returned earlier thisyear to Cargo/Headhunter.

That could present further business uncertainties--the San Diego label is negotiating a new deal for distributing its releases--but Smile felt that, after a four-year gap between albums, it was time to get back into circulation.

Keeping the Day Jobs

“The smartest thing for us to do right now is concentrate on California and the West Coast,” Rosas said, rather than try immediately to reassert the national presence the band enjoyed three years ago.

The band members aren’t giving up their day jobs. Thomson, whose credentials include backing Stone Temple Pilots front man Scott Weiland in his mid-’90s side project, Magnificent Bastards, and, more recently, playing in John Doe’s band, is a graphic artist.

Reeder sells advertising for an Orange County magazine group that caters to pet fanciers. Rosas is rock ‘n’ roll’s king of caffeine, having developed a side career working the counter at coffeehouses: He has completed a trifecta of sorts over the years by working for the Renaissance Coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, and Diedrich Coffee, including postings at the Tustin Marketplace and Fashion Island that allow him to keep tabs on the mall culture he can’t seem to help decrying in his songs.

“My first job ever was as a butcher’s assistant, which lasted only two days,” Rosas said. “There was a coffee shop down the street [from where he lived] in Irvine, that I wanted to work at because this girl I liked worked there. I just got sucked into that wild scene.”

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* Smile, Pseudo Cipher and the Killingtons play an all-ages show Saturday at Room With a Brew, 13120 Philadelphia St., Whittier. $7. 9 p.m. (562) 693-2739.