Hit makers and takers

Here in the Matrix’s music laboratory in Studio City, the “idea studio” where its hits for such artists as Avril Lavigne have been hatched, Lauren Christy is explaining the concept of a new song to the singer of Swollen Members, a young Canadian band that will record this potential treasure from one of pop music’s hottest writing-producing teams.

Christy cites 10cc’s wistful 1975 ballad of denial “I’m Not in Love” as a role model for “Once Again,” which describes a romantic fling through the eyes of a man whose protests can’t mask his infatuation.

Her comparison underscores the kind of cultural gap that the Matrix routinely overcomes -- Christy is a 33-year-old London native with a taste for Fleetwood Mac and Kate Bush, while Moka Only is a Vancouver hip-hop kid. But they’re soon working together intensely, sitting on a black couch and analyzing the character’s feelings and motivations.

While they hone the lyrics, the Matrix’s two other members -- Scott Spock and Christy’s husband, Graham Edwards -- huddle in front of a computer and a rack of synthesizers, refining the tempo and tweaking the melancholy melody. The arrangement gradually fills out as rhythm tracks and keyboards are layered atop Edwards’ acoustic guitar chords.

The lyric of the chorus is nearly done, but Christy now proposes a change for the important final line, replacing the stoic “I never loved you anyway” with the more revealing “Let me love you once again.”

“He’s saying, ‘Let me hang with you one more night,’ ” she explains to the band. “He must be really harsh in love, as you say.... I think that’s what gives it the mass appeal. Like, ‘I’m leaving. I don’t care about you. Let’s do it one more time.’ ”

Spock, listening in, concurs. “Yeah, that’s a little more mass appeal,” he says. “Mass appeal’s a good thing.”

A study in contrasts

Spock should know that those words might come back to bite him. In the past year the trio has concocted an impressive string of hits, notably Lavigne’s breakthrough singles “Sk8er Boi” and “Complicated,” but the team has also been taking critical hits for being a musical assembly line feeding pop radio’s lowest-common-denominator demands.

But what could be more auteur-like -- and in the best tradition of pop music -- than drawing on your own experiences as the basis for a song?

“Sk8er Boi” describes a misfired romance, and the Matrix based the lyric -- right down to the “he was a punk, she did ballet” line -- on the relationship of Christy and Edwards, who married in 1995 and now have two young children.

“She was a ballet dancer and I was a [messed-up] musician and did all these bad things,” says Edwards, 38, a soft-spoken Scotsman, sitting with his wife on the patio outside the studio, which is housed in a spacious recreation room of Spock’s hillside home. “I was a drinker and an abuser. I was married once before. Her parents were terrified when I turned up, but I kind of mellowed out.”

Spock, 33, sitting across from him, smiles at the story, although he’s heard it many times. These three might be demonized as the enemy of true art, but their easy rapport and friendly manner are reminiscent of a band that’s certain of its vision.

That confidence would be severely tested in a couple of weeks with the release of Liz Phair’s album. If the Matrix presided at the birth of a star with Lavigne, it would soon be accused of assisting in the career suicide of the indie-rock heroine.

“Embarrassing” and “desperate” were the keynote words in several vehemently negative reviews of “Liz Phair.” The album’s four collaborations between the Matrix and the singer-songwriter took special abuse in screeds accusing Phair of betraying her fans and her artistry.

“I think the criticism’s mainly coming from the point of view that she’s kind of abandoned her fan base and moved on to a different area,” Edwards said after the dust had started to settle. “I think that’s a little unfair, because she’s allowed to change.”

“It’s an artistic statement to be able to do something lighter,” Christy added. “Liz was saying when she came in to us she’d just come out of a really bad relationship.... Her marriage had broken up; she’d been in the bummer tent for too long. These songs we did were reflective of where she was at, just wanting to lighten up a bit.

“She knew she’d be criticized, but she loved it. She kept saying to me, ‘I know I’m gonna be in trouble for this, but I’m just blasting this stuff in my car and singing along to it, and I love it. I’m proud of it.’ ”

Credibility versus ambition

Behind-the-scenes writing-production units go back to the early days of rock, when artists were expected to sing and smile (or scowl), but not write their own songs or know how to start a tape recorder.

Back then, there was no conflict between quality and chart showing. Collectives such as Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland (10 of the Supremes’ Top 10 hits, as well as records for the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, et al) and Philadelphia International’s Gamble & Huff (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the O’Jays) were as admired as the artists they fed with hits. Even the ‘60s “bubblegum” brain trusts earned grudging respect for the catchiness of their product.

In this decade, though, these operations have acquired a stigma that’s hard to shake. Part of it comes from the assumption that a true artist should not need professional assistance and from the belief that looking for radio play is selling out. The image has also been tarnished by the cynically hollow faux-R&B; turned out by the Swedish teen-pop machine behind Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.

The Matrix (which, in this sense, means “womb”) is caught in the crosscurrent between these credibility issues and the demands of an escalating career.

In addition to a full slate of recording projects, the Matrix has a deal to produce the soundtrack and serve as script consultants on an MTV/Paramount feature film based on “Sk8er Boi.” Matrix’s members also have signed with Columbia Records to make their own album. They plan to hire two singers and have it out next spring.

They’ve also been selecting projects that figure to break the teen-pop image that’s come from their association with Christina Aguilera, Hilary Duff, Spears and other adolescents.

These range from Ricky Martin’s long-awaited English-language album to new David Bowie tracks to raw, T. Rex-flavored songs with New York glam-garage upstarts the Mooney Suzuki.

There’s also X-rated hip-hop with MDE, and dramatic, Coldplay-reminiscent tracks with Southland singer-songwriters Tyler Hilton and Keaton Simons.

“All we’ve had that you’ve heard up to now has been the singles on radio,” Edwards notes. “When you hear Keaton Simons, there are songs there that wouldn’t be played on radio necessarily. They’re a lot darker.... We can be obscure if we want to.”

In the early days

Edwards’ musical grounding reaches into the ‘80s, when he played with his dad’s pop-standards band and then with the R&B; group the Foundations (Top 10 with 1969’s “Build Me Up Buttercup”). He was a session musician in England, working with a host of acts including Adam & the Ants, Mick Jagger and Robert Palmer.

Christy recorded two albums in the early ‘90s and found some success on adult contemporary radio, but when she reached her 30s, she thought her age had became an issue with record companies and decided she was happier behind the scenes. Spock, a St. Louis native with a background as a jazz trumpeter, had worked on her second album and reconnected when he came in to program some music tracks for a band called Dollshead that Edwards was developing.

When Christy’s manager, Sandy Roberton, saw the three working together about four years ago, he immediately recognized their future as a writing-producing team. It was a struggle at first, but when they placed a song with Aguilera for a Christmas album, they were off and running.

Their success since then makes it easier to laugh off the criticism -- they’ve even hung up a framed copy of a headline calling them “three soulless droids” -- but inevitably, the urge for vindication emerges.

“We don’t want to be portrayed as ‘Oh, those guys just run a sausage factory over there,’ ‘cause we really don’t,” Spock says. “We really write from our hearts. We don’t consciously think, ‘What have we got to do to get this band on the radio?’ We just try to do the best we can and write songs.”

“It’s really hard to say we know what a hit song is or what Liz Phair needed to be a hit,” Christy says. “All we know is that the three of us have a sort of a vibe and we feed off each other, and we kind of like what each other does.... We don’t say we know what will become a hit. We just trust our instincts.”

“We like to think of ourselves as we’ve got this magnifying glass,” Spock adds, “and when an artist comes in, we try to take all the cool parts of what they’re known for and just magnify them so it’s more appealing for the masses to grab a piece of.”

Mooney Suzuki singer Sammy James Jr., for one, will attest to that.

“They seemed to bring more of our personality out in those two days [of collaborating] than we’d ever gotten on our records,” says the singer, recalling the odd-couple collaboration that yielded three demos and hopes for a full album together. “They could genuinely translate personality and make it sound more like us.”

The Matrix manager Roberton, who handles several other producers, including such big names as Steve Lillywhite, Don Was and Don Gehman, was a producer himself, working with English folk-rock demigods Steeleye Span and John Martyn, among others, in the 1960s and ‘70s.

“I think I know who the real guys are.... I’m not easily fooled on who’s good,” the L.A.-based Englishman says. “The Matrix are not manufacturing people. They really are songwriters who people come to to get a hit. They can write for American radio. If you’re in the pop business, you want records that people want to play and hear.”

That includes Phair, who may be taking heat for her decision but also is hearing her song on the radio.

“I’ve got to say, for all the criticism she’s had, she went straight into the album charts at 27,” Edwards says. “She’s never been that high with any of her records, so people are buying it and wanting to listen to it.”

*

Three albums that moved the Matrix

GRAHAM EDWARDS

“The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,”

David Bowie (1972)

I’ve always admired Bowie, I always thought he was an innovator, fearless. “Ziggy Stardust” is just amazing to me. It was so groundbreaking at the time. Bowie always took chances. He brought theater to music, and it was amazing, the change of characters in the whole thing. All the songs were beautiful. To me, it was incredibly ahead of its time.

LAUREN CHRISTY

“Hounds of Love,”

Kate Bush (1985)

I was really inspired by all her early albums really. I loved that she took all these crazy, wild chances, and it was very classically inspired. I was into anything that had weird things with vocals, not particularly following the norm. My first album was in that vein, and my second album was like a rockier version of that kind of thing, with very haunting melodies. Definitely not mainstream enough to get on the radio.

SCOTT SPOCK

“The Downward

Spiral,”

Nine Inch Nails (1994)

I was into jazz and R&B;, but a record that came out that was really an influence on me was “The Downward Spiral.” At that point I was doing a lot of remixes, and that album really opened my eyes to the way to aggressively approach rock with a bit of synthetic things. Another record for me was “The Bends” by Radiohead -- great songs, great production, great arrangements, great sounds, everything.