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IF YOU GO

Senryu CD release party with The High Score

WHEN: 10:30 tonight

WHERE: Barley"s Taproom, 200 E. Jackson Ave., Knoxville's Old City

HOW MUCH: $3

CALL: 521-0092

ON THE WEB: www.senryutheband.com

SENRYU ALSO PERFORMS: At 7 p.m. Saturday at Old City Java, 109 S. Central St. in the Old City, with Col. Knowledge and the Lickety Splits and the Mito Band. Admission is $5.

By Steve Wildsmith

of The Daily Times Staff

Listening to "pssst," the phenomenal new album by Knoxville pop-rock band Senryu, it's hard to understand why the album was intended to be the group's swan song.

From the opening track "Oubliette," with its gentle harmonies, head-bobbing drum and singer Wil Wright's Billy Corgan-style vocals, through the wistful strings that open the album's closing song, "Sleepyhead," it's easily the finest record the band has ever done.

Going into the recording process, however, Wright had every intention of making it the last thing the band ever did as well.

"We smashed our head into the wall for four years and had not gotten anybody's attention, so we went into the studio with this finalist attitude and just dove into every aspect of it," Wright told The Daily Times this week. "Going into it, I wasn't excited about it at all. It was kind of like going to a funeral, like this was the death of my baby.

"But we got the first half of it done, and all the sudden, there was this automatic excitement about it. I think we knew something was happening when [producer] Don [Coffey Jr.] started getting visually excited, because he's super-reserved and super low-key, even about things he likes. But we would be singing along and dancing and just seemed really, really excited, and all of the sudden, it didn't look like the end for Senryu."

Listening to "pssst," that's a very good thing. There's a clear evolution from the band's previous albums, "Stars and Garters" and "Bath of Broken Glass," that give even more weight to the sonic achievements on Senryu's latest achievement.

The band first formed in 2001, out of the ashes of another group called Roof, and Wright hooked up with keyboardist Steven Rodgers and drummer Seth Barber to form the backbone of Senryu. "Stars and Garters" established Senryu as an experimental pop-rock band but quickly became a vehicle for Wright's musical vision. After recording "Broken Glass" in 2003, Wright shifted into overdrive, signing the band with local label Disgraceland Records, recording an EP ("Down with the Sugarpills") of songs he wrote with his sister as a child and recording a solo album before taking the band into Coffey's Independent Recorders studio to cut "pssst."

Barber departed after the tour to support "Broken Glass," and Wright and Rodgers, after several changes to the band's lineup, finally gelled with Emory Barnett on bass and Lori Maxwell on keyboards. Wright credits Coffey's engineering genius and Maxwell's addition to the lineup as the catalyst for "pssst"'s successful sound.

"I think, probably for the first time since the inception of the band, we have a really solid lineup," he said. "The addition of Lori kind of tied it all together. As far as the live show goes, it's like I don't even remember what it was like playing without this lineup. I remember leaving a lot of shows feeling pretty bad.

"But it seemed like the only way to make people hear this album was to put on a powerful live show. These days, our shows are almost so upbeat we can't keep up sometimes. They're very dance-oriented and out of control, and that's the way we like it. It's a lot more violent and aggressive, but not in a dark way; more like in a very poppy way.

"We love it, and we've never had more fun than we've had right now," he added. "To have wrapped the album up the way we did and then head out for a month on an entire summer of touring, it feels like we can't be stopped."

That's a far cry from the early recordings of "pssst." But Coffey's enthusiasm, Wright said, revived the members' flagging spirits and rejuvenated the entire process. The turning point came, he added, when Wright heard the first playbacks for the song "Battery," the albums snarling first single full of frenetic harmonies and swaggering guitar.

"Don would send me back in and have me do it again, because he kept urging us to pick it up, and by the time we were done, we didn't recognize ourselves anymore," Wright said. "After that, it was like dominoes. All the ideas started falling into place. I've never really worked in an environment with that sort of creative energy flying around, so it was really pretty special."

In the end, going into the recording of "pssst" with the attitude of making it the band's coda had an opposite effect. Stripped of inhibitions and self-imposed limitations, the members threw everything into the mix, and the end result is a disc brimming with confidence, passion and near-stellar performances by everyone involved.

Instead of marking the end of Senryu, it instead heralds a new era. And with a new song already in the can ("The Inside of My Head Is a Cyclone," also recorded by Coffey), the future of Senryu looks brighter than ever.

"I don't think I would ever be a band that didn't spread it out all across the table sound-wise," Wright said. "We always try to keep our sound as broad as possible, but it seemed like the more we did it, the more we were dragged through the mud, and the more frustrated and furious I got with it.

"This was going to be the last album, sort of an, `OK, well take that' sort of punch to end everything. Whether it was the end or not, we wanted to knock everybody out, and I guess facing the end sort of ups the energy a little bit. The second we gave up, though, is when everything started to crack.

"It's actually, and still is, an extremely emotional time for us," he added. "We're really excited, because things keep happening. It's weird, because obviously we were ready to put it into the ground, and now it feels like we're about to start."