Lael
LeRoy and the Loved
Cobalt Lounge 32 NW 3rd Ave., 225-1003
10 pm Friday, July 16
$5
Lael Alderman seems an unlikely candidate for complex scenarios
of high business, alternate identities and back-room betrayals.
Hunkered over coffee in a cranny of Cup o' Cheer on Southwest
10th Avenue on a leaden July afternoon, the Portland singer,
songwriter and band leader could pass for any nice indie-rock
guy on the block, kitted out in low-maintenance thriftwear
and nerd-chic glasses.
But Alderman lives a life of intrigue. He has tasted the
bitter juices of a place he calls the Belly of the Beast--Los
Angeles--and come away a wiser man. And he feels OK about
this, which says quite a bit about his commitment to the
elegant, ultra-heartfelt pop that is his musical stock in
trade.
A year ago, Alderman wasn't quite a rock star yet, but
he practically lived the life: Viper Room showcases, brushes
with the famous and beautiful, a $200,000 record deal with
Geffen, a publishing contract with Sony/ATV. L.A. scene
shakers bandied his name about so much that weekly papers
there started printing rumors that he was about to ditch
Portland for the City of Angels--and some of his friends
up here thought he already had.
Then, the hammer of commerce descended. Last December,
Canadian conglomerate Seagram bought PolyGram, which owned
Geffen and a clutch of other labels, consolidating 25 percent
of global music sales with a pen stroke. The resulting crush
of mergers and firings left about 250 bands and artists
out in the cold, Alderman among them.
"Everyone I was working with knew it was going to happen,
but when they talked to me, they acted like it was just
another rumor," he says. "And now, a year later, no one
wants to talk to me because I'm not the Backstreet Boys.
"They fly you down there, take you to the best places,
introduce you to the coolest people, and you're the new
big thing. Then you get dropped like a rock."
When the ax fell in February, it brought an end to a long,
frustrating freeze on Alderman's musical plans. He could
finally book studio time for his band, then called the Somedays,
and cut some of his songs without having to worry about
demographic-obsessed A&R goons looking over his shoulder.
One problem: Because his publishing deal with Sony/ATV
lingers on, Alderman currently does not have the right to
release music under his own name unless he wants to pay
handsomely for the privilege. Hence, the advent of Lael
LeRoy and the Loved, the reinvention of the Somedays that
celebrates the release of its full-length CD Diary
on Friday.
With Diary, Alderman and the rechristened Loved
prove that, artistically at least, success is the best revenge.
It's a layered, almost delicate record that calls to mind
some lusher '80s pop balladry and the sweetened brand of
'60s pop that now fuels AM oldies stations the nation over.
Diary dwells on love and sadness, dressing these
themes in a heavy sauce of keyboards, horns and sparkling
guitars. It's beautiful, but it ain't Boyzone.
"I sent it to my old A&R guy--who got fired--and he
said, well, it's good, but this never would have made it
with me," Alderman recounts. "And it's true--on this record,
rather than putting down a bunch of singles that the record
execs would love to hear, we decided to say, 'This is our
sound, and it has a thread that runs through it, and we're
going to make an album that reflects that.'"
So, with musical redemption in his grasp, how does Alderman
feel about his winter-long ordeal with the Man?
"I'd be the first to say that if another major label came
along and was interested, I'd definitely be interested,"
he says. "Right now, though, we're going on tour and doing
it the old-fashioned way. I never really did that. I've
gone about this whole thing completely backward. A year
later, I'm a lot more happy with how I'm handling things.
"It did get my name around. Which now, of course, I've
had to change."
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Willamette Week | originally
published July 14, 1999
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