Louis XIV brings its royal hangover to Avalon

To hear it from Jason Hill, co-frontman, producer-engineer and lead songwriter for the decadent San Diego glam rock quartet Louis XIV, the band’s most ardent followers break down into two constituencies.

“You get the young 15-year-old, 18-year-old girls at the shows,” Hill explains one recent evening in a Culver City broadcast studio where he was set to be interviewed on “Loveline.” “They like the directness in the vocals and the flirtatious playfulness of the songs. The guys tend to be big rock fans who are really into the music.”

So, um, jailbait and rock nerds?

Hill laughs. “Maybe the rock nerds are there for the jailbait!”

He and band mates Brian Karscig, Mark Maigaard and James Armbrust had ample opportunity to become acquainted with both camps, having toured the world almost continuously since the release of Louis XIV’s snarling debut CD, “The Best Little Secrets Are Kept,” in 2005.

With its numerous references to drug abuse, cavalier attitude toward sex and arena-ready alterna-rock riffage, “Best Little Secrets” cemented Louis XIV’s reputation as having an appetite for excess -- or smut, depending on your perspective -- worthy of its Versailles-centric namesake. The group’s hit single, “Finding Out True Love Is Blind,” was even partially responsible for getting the band banned in Alabama.

The big surprise on Louis XIV’s second album, “Slick Dogs and Ponies” (released in January), however, is a musical maturity and dark grandeur almost no one, save the band members themselves, was expecting.

“The first album was like the party,” Hill says. “This record is like the morning after. Maybe you did too many drugs or drank too much. It’s a different kind of vibe. There’s a bit of disarray in it.”

Not to mention some truly rococo harpsichord playing and a 24-piece string section. As well, in a stark departure from the first CD’s stripped-down, fuzzed-out sound, “Slick Dogs” includes sepulchral atmospherics courtesy of having been recorded in Louis XIV’s home studio, an old brick church in northern San Diego.

“If anything, we should have repeated the first record more if we were paying attention to trying to sell records,” Hill says with a shrug. “But the idea was to go bigger, put more elements in it.”

Such ambition is most conspicuous on the group’s operatic blunderbuss “Air Traffic Control,” which features one of the most extended hangover metaphors in rock history.

But does it mean no more greasy kid stuff for Louis XIV?

Says Hill: “A lot of it is putting out this big flag that says, ‘Try to define me, and when you do, that’s when we’re gonna go somewhere else.’ ”

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-- Chris. Lee@latimes.com

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LOUIS XIV

WHERE: Avalon Hollywood, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood

WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday

PRICE: $15

INFO: (323) 462-8900; www.avalon hollywood.com/ concerts.html