Happy returns Mission of Burma release their first album in more than 20 years BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Clint Conley gets wrapped up in his job as a field producer for Channel 5’s TV newsmagazine Chronicle. "I love doing the interviews and the research. I get totally absorbed. And then some days, I’ll be at work, and suddenly I’ll think something like, ‘Oh my God! I’m going out to California this weekend, where I’ll be singing in front of 3000 people. That’s ludicrous!’ "

Only to Conley, who has managed to compartmentalize the roles of his life: news-show producer, husband and father, and bass player for Mission of Burma. It’s this last, of course, that took him out to the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in LA last year, to the English version of that event this spring, and on a recent press junket, along with Burma drummer Peter Prescott, to Brussels, Hamburg, and Paris. "I figured we’d talk to a few fanzines and then have the rest of the day to wander around each city. But they worked us. The label put us in hotel rooms and marched a different journalist in every half-hour. And they asked questions like [affecting a French accent], ‘Were you aware zat ze legend was growing?’ And I’d go . . . [he laughs], ‘Uh, not really.’ "

"It was easy not to see that," Prescott chimes in with a laugh as he, Conley, and I talk in a Cambridge coffeeshop.

What’s easy to see today is that Mission of Burma are a band with the kind of underdog’s story that rock fans and journalists both love. They were wildly inventive but largely ignored, even in their home town of Boston, during their original run from 1979 to 1983. When they disbanded because of guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus, they left behind an album, an EP, and two singles on the independent label Ace of Hearts. And a ripple that grew. They were a band who inspired other bands and aspiring musicians including R.E.M., the Pixies, Soul Asylum, R.E.M., Sugar, Catherine Wheel, the Spinanes, Moby, and scores of lesser-known members of the alternative-rock fraternity and sorority have covered their songs.

Nonetheless, when they reunited in early 2002, it seemed more a lark and a celebration of their former manager Mark Kates’s return to Boston after years in the music-biz trenches of Los Angeles. "I think we were tremendously ambitious the first time around," Conley offers. "We were idealistic. We were burning with conviction that our music was right, that there was so much crap around, and that we were going to try to remake it our own way. At the same time, we were conditioned early on that this wasn’t going to be commercially successful. It wasn’t in the cards for us to be popular."

"Maybe there’s some defensiveness built into that," Prescott adds. "I felt like ‘I’m not going to make a million dollars off this, but neither are eight billion other people who play their music. But we’re making music that’s built to stand, and I’m gonna grab onto it and hold it to my heart.’ "

"When we were getting ready to play our first shows after that long break, if you would have told me we’d be putting out a record, that would have felt like too much for me," says Conley. "When we got together to rehearse, and Roger said he didn’t want to do the shows unless we played some new songs, the lazy part of me felt like it was going to take all my energy just to be up to snuff on the old stuff. But now we’re getting ready to put out that record, and it couldn’t feel more right."

Or be more eagerly awaited. When Mission of Burma made their first full-length album, Vs., in 1982, a clutch of ardent fans in the Northeast awaited. Twenty-two years later, thousands — likely tens of thousands — of fans throughout the US and Europe are waiting for the new ONoffON (Matador; due May 4), which is only Burma’s second proper full-length studio album. The good news is that there’s no bad news. ONoffON is a ripper — raw, bubbling with jittery energy, and busting out with 16 songs that sound as good as, and at times better than, their earlier music. As Roger Miller, on tour in Detroit with the Alloy Orchestra, puts it when we talk by phone: "It’s a Burma album. It still has that quality that’s always made us Mission of Burma: that sense of things appearing to fall apart and then slamming tightly back together, that chaos coupled with gigantic, focused energy."

There’s more. This is a Burma album with strings, at least on a few numbers. Yet those tunes sound nothing like Metallica with strings. The band use the instruments in a way that suggests they’re rethinking the way they make music. Built around viola, cello, and Prescott’s rich-toned kick drum, "Prepared" is closer to Sinatra, or, for indie diehards, the early Silos with strings. That’s rarefied territory. And though Prescott was always the Burma character who’d work a laugh into the mix, this time Conley has penned what sounds like a country parody in "Nicotine Bomb."

Another difference is in the loops and sonic manipulations. In the old days, Martin Swope was the member off stage in the wings, mixing the live sound and using reel-to-reel tapes to sample and distort whatever came out of the amps and microphones that caught his fancy. But when Swope, who now lives in Hawaii, declined to rejoin, Prescott, Miller, and Conley decided to draft their friend Bob Weston into service. He didn’t have to be asked twice. "I love Burma," he says over the phone from his home base in Chicago. "They’re my favorite band of all time, and I’m in it now. I’m like the Forrest Gump of indie rock!"

An engineer and producer who plays bass in Shellac and has his own history in Boston rock (including Prescott’s former band Volcano Suns), Weston has a more daring hand than Swope. The new "Absent Mind," in particular, is a sonic playground of looped vocal and guitar manipulations — a wild ride into Burma’s craziest sonic regions.

ONoffON, which was produced by the group in league with Ace of Hearts boss Rick Harte and engineered by Weston, begins with a blast that’ll rivet old or new fans of Burma’s kaleidoscopic take on arty punk rock — an approach that’s as fresh-sounding and proudly idiosyncratic as it was two decades ago. "The Set Up" comes roaring on, surrounding its hooky pop lyrics about heartache with a spiky metallic sheath of guitar. It’s distinctly a Miller tune, built on the angular guitar style of "Max Ernst," the number that along with Conley’s "Academy Fight Song" made up the group’s debut single in 1980. Then there’s "Hunt Again," a Conley number rippling with his trademark melodicism and bouncing, propulsive chords. And as fans who’ve heard him at the comeback shows or with his own group Consonant — which started at roughly the same time Mission of Burma returned to service — know, he’s singing more flexibly and with better tone than 20 years ago. The third song, "The Enthusiast," with its soft cymbal hits giving way to growling guitar and howling singing, is a typically dark and madcap Prescott number. It’s also a gem, with its "I’m high as a kite on a windless night" refrain and a subtle swipe at Metallica’s "Enter Sandman" in its vocal melody.

So ONoffON goes, with the members trading songs throughout. They ricochet from the Beatles-like "What We Really Were," with genuine three-part harmonies, to the poetic "Max Ernst’s Blood," the gritty "Dirt," and "Playland." That last track opens with a six-string squall from Miller that’s a reminder of one of Burma’s principal joys: the small bursts of improvisation that are built into their most adventurous tunes. Sure, Mission of Burma’s three-man core have all passed 45, but they can still play their asses off.

"As songwriters," says Conley, analyzing Burma’s compositional make-up, "Roger is very musicianly. He brings in things that can be very challenging to learn. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to find bass notes for the chords he’s using."

"Or rhythms," Prescott chimes in.

"His songs need to evolve in your head until you can understand them," Conley continues. "I consider him the master songwriter. Peter is more the brutalist. He comes in and borrows my bass to shows us a song and plays all these intense 16th notes."

"I’ve been told that even in the bands where I was playing guitar," Prescott says, referring to his post-Burma outfits Kustomized and the Peer Group, "I was playing drums." He laughs.

"Your songs tend to be more fully evolved," Prescott says. "Then when we all come together, we all bring our own thing to it and the songs grown in new directions."

The same kind of collective creativity transpires live, where the band members try to develop new variations on the parts they play in songs, hoping to take one another to untested ground. And of course, the new songs keep coming too. When Mission of Burma play Avalon on May 22, they’ll be unveiling numbers more recent than the 16 on ONoffON. All of which aren’t so new. It’s worth noting that ONoffON’s sound bomb "Playland" was on the demos and outtake collection Forget (Taang!), a relatively obscure release by what until recently has been a relatively obscure band. Although Burma’s hardcore fans might disagree.

"I think for me, the most amazing experience was when we played Irving Plaza in New York for the first time, in 2002," says Miller. "We did ‘Playland.’ I’d heard a tape of a live show we’d played at MIT in ’82, and when the song was over, there was no applause at all. This time, I could see like 30 people out in the audience singing along. That night, when I got back to my hotel room, all this stuff welled up in me that I hadn’t known was buried. I felt a wave of relief and a lot of tension was gone. It was very emotional, really amazing. I think it also made us want to play better."

Now, having enjoyed some long-delayed affirmation of their work, Mission of Burma are heading into ONoffON’s release and tour with a modest goal. "It would be awful to be perceived as middle-aged rockers out to achieve some kind of glory," says Conley. "And I don’t think anybody can write us off as shadows of our former selves, because we’re writing good songs and playing really hard."

"Yeah," says Prescott. "What we’re going to do is tour in short bursts. We want to do right by Matador, which is a great label for us to be on, so we’ll play dates. But Clint has Consonant and his job and family. Roger has the Binary System and Alloy Orchestra and needs to be careful about prolonged exposure to loud music. And I’ve already been bitchin’ about traveling."

"What I hope happens is that people will experience the vitality and sheer joy we’re feeling when they come to hear Mission of Burma," says Conley. "That’s why we’re doing this: for the sheer joy of playing this music together."

Mission of Burma play Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston, on Saturday May 22; call (617) 228-6000.