For a second, I thought I had blown it. While trying to describe the evolution of Everclear from grungy Portland twentysomethings to an articulate, mature rock band, I slipped and threw out what in some circles could be a very dangerous thing: the word "pop." I half expected this Portland trio--drained from a humid Hollywood day of photo shoots and interview duties--to dish out a bit of indie-rock snottiness, snubbing the very word. Or worse yet, to go off on how they still have the grit that made World Of Noise so passionate and dissonant--and that I should just shut the hell up. But that didn't happen. Lest we forget, this is an older, wiser Everclear. Frontman Art Alexakis went through therapy on 1995's breakthrough Sparkle And Fade and came out a self-realized, clear-headed rocker with a handle on his whole life situation--and his development shows on the band's latest album, So Much For The Afterglow. "I think this is Everclear's pop record," Alexakis says. "I can't imagine us getting any poppier than this. But maybe we can, I don't know. Pop isn't a bad word to me. Pop doesn't mean Mariah Carey. Pop means Elvis Costello and the Beatles, the Beach Boys. And there's a lot of that in the [new album's] sound." Kicked off by a dreamy Beach Boys falsetto--an added touch out of respect more than anything else--So Much For The Afterglow doesn't get up in your face, flip you the bird and tell you the world is fucked. Alexakis doesn't need to do that anymore. The message now comes through more subtly under a subversive mix of post-grunge guitars, West Coast hooks and endearingly oddball country jams (the result of the influence of Alexakis's country-loving, North Carolinian mother). With a slew of guest musicians jumping on board (Less Than Jake's Buddy Schaub and Derron Nuhfer, the Wild Colonials' Paul Cantelon and the Wallflowers' Rami Jaffee) to add horns, violins and organs to the mix, So Much is both musically and lyrically more evolved than previous Everclear efforts. "World Of Noise I wanted to be straight from the heart and

not really intellectual, just emotion, just oomph. Sparkle And Fade had some of that, but it had more heart and more head in it. Now with this record, there's a lot more grooves," Alexakis says. "I think it's more body-oriented. There's a lot of heart still in there. It's a more of a grown-up kind of...I'm more of a father now. I'm more of a dad. It doesn't have anything to do with how aggressive the music is, the growth comes from the dimension of the sound and lyrics." Instead of just being screwed up and not knowing why--proclaiming that he's simply strung-out, and as he so put it in his early work, feeling "nervous and weird"--Alexakis is now able to articulate the mess that has made him create such disturbing yet enchanting music. Examining the relationships with his father and mother ("Father Of Mine" and "Why I Don't Believe In God") and digging at the root of his confused youth, Alexakis is closer to the answers fans have watched him trail after for years. Not all is resolved, though. The nonconformist ("Everything To Everyone" and "One Hit Wonder"), recovering drug addict ("Normal Like You" and "Amphetamine"), relationship failure ("I Will Buy You A New Life") and storyteller incarnations of Alexakis are still lurking behind those surf- influenced pop guitars. "I just write about what I know. And I've lived a lot of life for a 35-year-old," says Alexakis. "Hopefully I'll live more. And I'll continue to write for awhile. But when I feel like I don't have anything else to write about, I'll stop." Alexakis's emotional cleaning / anti-drug stance is most prominent in "Ataraxia (Media Intro)"--a sample taken from a government propaganda film hyping the use of prescription drugs to cure emotional aliments--that leads into the Prozac-killing "Normal Like You." "'Are you down? Take an upper, that will pick you up. Are you strung out? Take this, that will calm you down,'" Alexakis mocks. "People take those and it's supposed to make you feel normal, but it doesn't really make you feel normal. It just helps you fell less manic. And the side effects are pretty weird," he adds. "I've been through it before. Just about everybody I know or at least one person I meet every day is either on anti-depressants,

or has been on them, or is thinking of going on them or knows someone who's on them." These are Alexakis's remaining scars, but they're healing. Besides, pain makes for great art. But today, I'm not going to get the same Alexakis that once told me, "I'm angry and I'm pissed off...I'm working out a lot of the shit I grew up with. I grew up angry. I grew up in pretty fucked-up background. I got a lot of scars and it helps me to write songs." That was an Alexakis that didn't give two squirts about holidays and challenged, "I'll kick your ass if you pity me" in World Of Noise's "Loser Makes Good." Nope, today I get an Alexakis that is interested in doing the "the living thing," getting married, raising kids and settling down. (Art charmingly says of his child: "She's got a big heart. I just love her so much. I think it has helped me become a more wider-dimensioned person, a more diverse person with much more depth. It will change you, man.") There'll be no suicide note and messy coroner's report at the end of this tale. Years of self-analysis and open-hearted exposure has finally worked. But enjoy it while you can. The guys promise a good year of dynamic touring (taking extra guitarist Stephen Birch to fill in some of the extra guitar layers on So Much), after which they're wondering what they'll do next. If the band doesn't continue to grow, the plan is to shake hands on a job well done and proudly walk away. "What we tried to do was make a record that sounded noticeably different than Sparkle And Fade, but still sounded like an Everclear record. And we did that, but when we stop doing that, it's over," says Alexakis. "When we get to the next record after this, I think you'll be able to look at all the records and see the natural progression. And that's what I like in bands. You go back and listen to Aerosmith records; I think of their first four records as classic records. After that they started covering the same ground. They should have stopped a long time ago...And when it's over for us, we'll quit. I guarantee you, this band will not live longer then five or six records. Besides," he adds with a slight smile, "I'm getting too old."