Sinatras get out of the red, on the road

Nothing puts the brakes on a pop music career quite like bankruptcy, which is what took Scotland’s Trashcan Sinatras out of the public eye for several years after financial woes forced the band to go bust in the late 1990s.

The group’s early-’90s albums, “Cake” and “I’ve Seen Everything,” had anticipated the gently melodic, emotionally sensitive Brit-pop that later would work wonders for such bands as Radiohead and Coldplay. But arriving as they did in the midst of the grunge craze, those efforts spawned only a cult following for TCS, and the Sinatras’ 1996 album, “A Happy Pocket,” was never released in the U.S.

Although forced to sell their Shabby Road recording studio, the band members refused to call it quits. Sales of merchandise from the band’s website, along with aid from the Scottish Arts Council, helped the band finance its first album in eight years, “Weightlifting,” which was released in August. And the band is touring North America for the first time in more than a decade, with shows Friday and Saturday at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on the heels of Wednesday night’s performance at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

“When we came out of bankruptcy, a bit of the pressure or the feeling that we hated the Trashcans had been lifted,” singer Frank Reader told Rolling Stone magazine recently. “All the while we had been building little pieces of songs, and we felt it was our duty to them to finish them off -- even if it turned out to be the last hurrah. There was something liberating about that.”

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Trashcan Sinatras

Where: The Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

When: 8 and 11:30 p.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $15

Info: (310) 276-6168 or www.troubadour.com