The Brains Behind the Faulty Logic

Peter Himmelman, the brainy rocker who called one of his albums “Gematria” and another “Synesthesia,” clearly lacks the gift of pithy nomenclature.

Otherwise, he might rename himself Peter Paradox and clarify everything.

Paradoxes have framed this Minnesota-bred, Santa Monica-based singer-songwriter’s 14-year recording career, and they continue with “Love Thinketh No Evil,” Himmelman’s first studio album (other than a children’s record) since 1994.

Himmelman is the rock ‘n’ roller who keeps kosher and won’t perform Friday nights, the ushering in of the Jewish Sabbath--a level of religious commitment in rock that, come to think of it, is less paradoxical than simply unheard of. (Gematria, by the way, is a method of mystical interpretation of Hebrew scripture based on numerology; Synesthesia” is the confounding of one sense for another--which in Himmelman’s song of the same name is imagined as the impact of a mystical experience.)

He is the maker of intensely philosophical, spiritual and unremittingly serious albums who, in concert, emerges most memorably as a cutup of the first order, making up silly songs on the spot, passing out crayons and paper to fans so they can write or draw their impressions of his shows and sometimes simply taking a hike--his entire audience in tow--until he can find a nice outdoor setting on nights when a club seems too sterile or stultifying.

Himmelman, 39, might be considered the thinking person’s Barenaked Ladies, but, unlike the effervescent Canadian band, he hasn’t been building steady momentum toward a big breakthrough.

Paradoxically, Himmelman thinks his exile from the presumed comforts of a major label deal and the long delay between albums (his 1994 release, “Skin,” was a concept album that, by his own judgment, came off “half-baked”) has been good for his career and his bottom line.

“No one else is stupid enough to jump off Epic Records with nowhere else to go, but I did,” Himmelman said recently from a hotel in Alexandria, Va., a stop on a tour that brings Himmelman and his band to the Coach House on Tuesday. “I just left. I don’t like the idea of being somewhere you’re not exactly welcome to the party.”

Instead of chasing “this very large carrot they’re holding in front of you”--the prospect of a hit record and attendant riches and fame--Himmelman concentrated on film scoring, made a live album for a tiny independent label and put out his children’s record, “My Best Friend Is a Salamander” (another, “My Fabulous Plum,” awaits release).

“It’s so much better, inestimably better,” he said of the bottom-line results. “Part of it is that the fan base has been expanding even without a major label, so the shows are worth more, not less, than they used to [be]. I think I did well [during a six-album tenure in the majors] by using the opportunities to build a national following live and on radio.

“With one of my advances, I wisely bought myself a [home] recording studio, and it’s paid for itself many times over.”

But Himmelman, who now records for Six Degrees, a San Francisco-based independent label, hasn’t given up his hopes for that big hit--something that shouldn’t be impossible for a rocker well-versed in proven accessible sources. On his new album, Elvis Costello, Beatles-esque touches, gospel-tinged piano ballads a la Elton John and strains from Bob Dylan (Himmelman’s father-in-law) all come into play, and the climactic cut, “Gravity Can’t Keep My Spirit Down,” concludes with impassioned soul-testifying straight out of the Otis Redding handbook.

Despite never having placed an album in the Billboard Top 200, hits “are absolutely in the fore of my mind. I think there was a hit song on all of my records. Whether they’ve been overlooked, or there were things I’m not exactly willing to do [promotionally], there was always a hit in there somewhere. I wouldn’t be out on the road if I didn’t think there was a shot at it.”

Indeed, “Love Thinketh No Evil,” which ranks with “Gematria” (1987) and “Flown This Acid World” (1992) as Himmelman’s most inspired collections, has a lot for adult-rock lovers to latch onto.

Paradoxically for a father of four who speaks glowingly of his marriage and has a knack for writing urgent and affecting odes to love (the impassioned litany “7 Circles” fills the bill on “Love Thinketh”), Himmelman’s new album is a dark, brooding affair that sounds like the work of a man whose deepest commitments and most fundamental assumptions have come unraveled.

“I think I might be drawing on other times in my life, times when things might not have been as clear. Some of these characters and feelings are not necessarily present-tense autobiography.”

The most paradoxical line on the album is the refrain of “Million Miles Wide,” when our philosophical songsmith cries, “My world’s a million miles wide, but it’s one inch deep.”

“That might have been autobiographical,” Himmelman said. “I don’t feel deep most of the time, put it that way. But I do strive to kind of get a bigger picture, and many things conspire to keep it small. It’s definitely a fight for me.”

The anguished tone of many of the album’s songs about relationships reflects not a pessimistic vision, Himmelman said, but a realistic assessment of the struggles involved when the emotional stakes are so high.

“Maybe they’re all about destroying the idea of what the [commonly] projected images of love are about,” he said. “How it’s so much deeper than that, richer and more of a struggle than you imagine, and then the reward is much greater than you can imagine as well.

“In the relationship I’m in [with wife Maria], I could never have dreamed of the rewards I’ve gotten. It’s like conceiving of a color beyond violet, off the color chart. And there’s a price to be paid for that reward. The paradox, as much in art as in love, is that through the doubt and frustration, you have to go there to come out the other end. For many people, myself included, it comes as such a shock.”

* Peter Himmelman and Amy Peer play Tuesday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $12.50-$14.50. (949) 496-8930.