Erin go beach boy

Conor DEASY and Daniel Ryan of the Dublin rock group the Thrills are in the back of an SUV, en route to a pub in nearby Carlsbad to play a few tunes at a radio station promotion.

We’re supposed to be doing an interview on the way, but they are so excited to find that I’ve met many of their heroes that they’re asking more questions than they’re answering.

As the vehicle moves north through Encinitas, they are only mildly intrigued to learn that Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder went to high school there.

It’s the older stars they really want to know about.

“Did you ever meet Gram Parsons?” asks Ryan, the band’s guitarist.

“What about Neil Young?” wonders Deasy, the Thrills’ singer and songwriter.

By the end of the hour, they’ve also asked about Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Burt Bacharach, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, Arthur Lee and 26 others.

When they learn I went to Folsom Prison when Johnny Cash recorded his famous album there, they all but hyperventilate.

Of all the themes embraced by rock ‘n’ roll during its formative years, from self-affirmation to rebellion, the most difficult to express convincingly in these cynical times is innocence -- and what makes the Thrills so special, as people and artists, is how they express their feelings so openly.

That winning innocence makes their debut album, “So Much for the City,” one of the year’s genuine pop treasures.

Drawing liberally from landmark rock forces, the Thrills’ music is as warm as the sunny California references in the lyrics. The songs -- which were inspired by the band’s four-month stay in San Diego in 1999 -- remind you at times of the more adult, post-surfer side of the Beach Boys, the “Harvest”-era wistfulness of Neil Young and the youthful daydreams of Gram Parsons.

The wonder of “So Much for the City” isn’t just that five young musicians in Dublin made music filled with such sweet optimism but also that the album could also move through the major label machinery without being compromised.

It wasn’t easy.

The Thrills’ demo tape, which included songs that ended up on the album, was turned down by label after label in England two years ago, sometimes twice by the same company. Many bands would have altered their sound in hopes of getting a deal. But the Thrills didn’t budge.

“We had no interest in just trying to be in fashion and fit in with all the other over-hyped bands out there that were getting signed because they had the right haircuts or the right guitar sound,” says Deasy, whose soft, understated good looks fit his reserved manner.

“I never lost confidence in our music, but I did begin to lose confidence in anyone at a record company ever going, ‘Oh, yeah, I see what you are doing. It’s good.’ ”

The executive who finally did say it was Virgin Records’ Philippe Ascoli.

“My A&R; guy, Nick Burgess, got a tape and we loved the music because it was our roots ... people like Gram Parsons and the Beach Boys,” says the London-based Ascoli. “When I heard ‘Big Sur’ on their demo tape, I couldn’t believe the band wrote it. I thought it was some great old song they had found.”

As soon as word spread in London in summer 2002 that Virgin Records was interested, other labels started circling the Thrills, which is typical of the follow-the-leader mentality of the record business.

When the band held a showcase in London, nearly two dozen companies sent representatives, and most wanted to talk contract afterward.

Alan Cullivan, the Thrills’ manager, says the band considered only Virgin and Rough Trade because they had shown interest before the buzz. “We wanted to be somewhere we felt the label really understood what we were about,” he says.

Just before signing with EMI-owned Virgin, in fact, the band phoned the chairman and CEO of EMI Music in England and Ireland for reassurance.

Tony Wadsworth, who was instrumental in the development of such acclaimed acts as Radiohead and Coldplay, chuckles about the call.

“I think the band wanted to sign with a company that had just as much love for an era of music as they do,” he says. “When they were going through the fine points of the contract with lawyers, they called and said they had a quiz for me. I think the first was what was my favorite Beach Boys song.

“I think I said ‘Heroes and Villains,’ and they seemed to like that. At the end, they asked which is my favorite Thrills song and I think I said ‘Santa Cruz.’ I think they felt safe. They put down the phone and signed the contract.”

San Diego sojourn

Like that other famous Dublin band, U2, the Thrills consists of high school mates. In fact, Deasy and Ryan lived next door to each other during grade school, quickly discovering a mutual love of rock ‘n’ roll.

They started a band in high school, mostly playing Led Zeppelin-type hard rock songs with the other Thrills members, keyboardist Kevin Horan, bassist Padraic McMahon and drummer Ben Carrigan.

They rehearsed a lot the first year, but the music didn’t seem to go anywhere, Deasy says. The band had no direction or personal voice. The Thrills were on the edge of breaking up in summer 1999 when they headed to San Diego.

They had just graduated from high school and they saw this as their one chance at visiting America before they settled into the workaday world. They picked California because of the state’s romantic images, and they knew San Diego would be a lot more laid-back than Los Angeles.

While here, they rented a small one-room apartment just steps from the beach and worked at odd jobs, including face-painting children at Sea World. They also spent countless evenings listening to music and strumming guitars on a couch they dragged onto the beach.

Returning to Dublin, Deasy and the others felt renewed and threw themselves back into the band in earnest. But it wasn’t until another U.S. visit, this time to San Francisco a year later, that the songs really started taking shape.

Though the album’s songs are peppered with the names of California cities, Deasy said the band never set out to write specifically about the state.

“Essentially the lyrics are the story of us being back in Dublin, when we were at a real low point,” Deasy says, sitting in the patio of the Carlsbad pub before the radio show taping.

“When we put the line ‘Santa Cruz, you’re not that far’ into a song, we were in this horrible little basement of a room and we were holding down these dead-end jobs. We were worried about the future of the band and haunted by these great memories of California.

“We had even had a contract with an indie label in Dublin for a while but got dropped. We didn’t even tell our parents about being dropped because we didn’t want any lectures about how we were wasting our time trying to be in a band.”

So to the band, California was a symbol of this almost mythical place where everything always seemed carefree and sunny. That gave the music an upbeat, escapist feel that contrasted with many of the words in the songs.

The uncertainty and stress of those Dublin days helps keep the innocence in the Thrills’ music from being wide-eyed. Songwriter Deasy injects even the sunniest-sounding tune with lyrics that offer traces of melancholia and doubt.

“Hey, hey, you’re the Monkees,” he sings near the start of “Big Sur,” a nod to the playful innocence of that ‘60s TV band. The arrangement has a catchy, good-time feel, complete with a jingly banjo and guitar exchange reminiscent of the jug band side of the Lovin’ Spoonful.

But the lyrics are cautionary, a warning about living in or romanticizing the past. He also urges against following anyone else’s path, “So much for the street lights/ They’re never gonna guide you home.”

“Till the Tide Creeps In,” the album’s centerpiece, is also about rallying against despair. The track starts with a swirling, sentimental organ sound, like the one found in Otis Redding hits, as Deasy sings about a time when everything was going right, “I was surfing this tidal wave of faded glories.”

The song is about someone going through writer’s block, but it could be about anyone who has lost something important. Rather than give up, he chooses to “dance ‘til the tide creeps in.”

When it was time to go into the studio, the band hooked up with producer Tony Hoffer, who has worked with such artists as Beck and Air. The game plan was to keep things simple.

“We didn’t want them to change a thing,” recalls Virgin’s Ascoli. “Before they went into the studio in Los Angeles, Tony and I talked a lot about not having too polished a sound. We all wanted to maintain the beauty and innocence of the band.”

Optimism about sales

Critics applauded “So Much for the City” when it was released in Europe last summer. The influential Q magazine gave it four out of five stars and later named the Thrills the best new band of the year. The album entered the charts at No. 1 in Ireland and No. 3 in England. Sales have now surpassed 500,000 in Europe.

But sales have not kept pace in this country, where the album was released in November. Because the music doesn’t have the edgy or aggressive traits that lead to play on MTV or rock radio, exposure has been slow. After two months, U.S. sales are at only 18,000.

Still, Virgin executives in the U.S. are optimistic.

“We realized it would take time building an audience in this country,” says Stacy Conde, Virgin’s New York-based vice president of worldwide marketing. “The band is going to be touring again here the first of the year. I don’t think we’ll have a real indication of how the album is going to do here until the spring.”

Critics in the U.S. have generally been as enthusiastic about the Thrills as those in Europe.

A New York Times review noted, “The first six songs on this CD are so stellar that it’s hard to keep from backing up the album over and over and never making it to the end.” Entertainment Weekly declared this “Beach Boys-meets-Neil Young-style outfit may just be the best Irish import since Guinness.”

But the enthusiasm hasn’t translated into the lengthy profiles and cover stories that you need to capture the attention of rock fans here. That may be because the group and its music don’t exhibit the edgy or hip characteristics that tend to make the best copy.

Even on stage, whether it’s the acoustic show in Carlsbad or with guitars plugged in the next night at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, the band members tend to be reserved.

There’s no pretense or flashiness in their manner or attire -- as if the only thing that matters is the music. As the front man, Deasy does try to inject some energy into the set and steps outside of the songs at points to share some thoughts with the fans.

But the Thrills’ innocence is seen as a lack of ambition and drive.

Deasy tends to be just one of the guys when he’s around the band members, but get him off to the side and there’s a deeply rooted ambition and seriousness at work.

“I don’t want us to be defined by the first record, because that was us at one point,” he says, sitting in the SUV on the ride back to San Diego after the radio station promotion. “The album sounds innocent because we were very innocent, but we’re not going to try to go back to that place on the next album.

“Change is essential if you are going to avoid becoming a parody of yourself. When you look at Neil Young’s career, each record is a step forward. Even if I didn’t like every step he took, I liked that he took it and eventually he made another record I loved. That’s the way I want this band to be too.”

But it may not be easy moving past that innocence.

As the interview winds down, guitarist Ryan joins us on the back seat with more questions:

“What about Tom Waits?” Ryan asks. “What’s he like?”

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The Thrills’ Conor Deasy on some of his favorite artists

Burt Bacharach: “The songwriting was so incredibly sophisticated but deceptively so. That’s what I always love the most -- when someone can do something really intelligent and have it work for a little kid or an old granny. And Hal David’s lyrics were marvelous.”

Gram Parsons: “Even though he didn’t really have any big hit records, everybody knows his records because he influenced so much, and you can start with the Rolling Stones. He didn’t write ‘Wild Horses,’ but he ... pushed the Stones in that direction. Keith [Richards] was a huge fan.”

Beck: “People made a lot about how he took hip-hop beats and mixed them with folky guitar, but his last album [“Sea Change”] showed how great a songwriter he is. He can create a beautiful melody and a heartfelt beat. That’s very rare.”

Thom Yorke and Radiohead: “I admire their adventurous spirit. Each record has been different. The last few records haven’t been my favorite Radiohead records, but I still enjoy them. I think they constantly challenge their audience, which you can’t say for lots of bands.”

Bob Dylan: “It’s just the incredibly poetic lyrics. A lot of rock lyrics work well in a song, but if you read them on a piece of paper, it’s different. With Dylan, they are so poetic you can read them on paper and they still amaze you.”

Brian Wilson: “A lot of my favorite bands started off writing pure bubble-gum pop and that’s a great way to fine-tune your skills, but then they went on to something interesting. His whole ‘Heroes and Villains,’ ‘Pet Sounds’ period was just amazing, how anyone could write such gorgeous melodies.”

Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com