A second shot at a first impression

PROVIDENCE -- The Boston band Aberdeen City was halfway through the last tune of a short set sandwiched between two never-heard-of-them rock groups on a recent Sunday when the song ``Mercy " began to devolve.

It fell apart fast. Guitarist Chris McLaughlin scaled the bass drum to reach a splintered beam, where he swung, not gingerly, scraping at his strings with one free hand. The singer and bassist, Brad Parker, started spanking something, a cowbell or a woodblock, but it was hard to tell because he was crumpled in a ball. Ryan Heller wound up with a drum stick rather than an electric guitar in his hand, and he used it like a weapon. Drummer Rob McCaffrey tended the flock, shepherding what had once been a song until the thing came to a crashing, and frankly magnificent, close.

Aberdeen City plays big, dreams big, and is getting a big break. On Tuesday, Sony Music will re-release the group's 2005 indie debut, ``The Freezing Atlantic," on its Red Ink imprint. Two tracks were re-recorded for the major-label launch with Steve Lillywhite, a record producer whose formidable resume includes albums with U2, the Rolling Stones, Morrissey, the Pogues, and Talking Heads. In fact it was Lillywhite -- in his new capacity as a Columbia Records A&R scout -- who signed the band.

``If there's a slot between the Killers and Interpol, I think Aberdeen City fits right there," says Lillywhite. ``I'm very pleased."

The guys in Aberdeen City seem pleased, as well, but they're hardly agog. Changes so far include the acquisition of a van, in which the foursome will crisscross North America this fall, a new guitar pedal, and road cases with working castors. The real watershed, of course, isn't what they've gotten but what they've given up: day jobs. Parker gave notice at Newbury Comics, Heller stashed his real estate license in a drawer, McCaffrey no longer hawks musical gear to pay the rent. McLaughlin, an audio engineer, still records local bands in his Chelsea studio, but bookings are fewer and further between, scheduled for off days during recent tours with Elefant and Sound Team.

Next month Aberdeen City will hit the road with Electric Six for an eight-week tour of the US and Canada that stops at the Middle East on Sept. 19.

``We have a unique opportunity to dive into this and work hard and get really good at it," says Parker. ``This is a skill that needs to be refined."

Aberdeen City's singer and main songwriter is on what he describes as a personal mission to immerse himself in the pursuit of knowledge and inspiration: the pillars, Parker says, of good songwriting. The group's only schooled musician, Parker is a classical violinist as well as a rock 'n' roll bass player. After sound check, while his bandmates were scrounging for food and drink, Parker was reading ``Atlas Shrugged" in the parking lot. Eventually everyone gathered in a circle on the gravel. The first order of business was separating the truth from the malarkey on Aberdeen City's website (www.aberdeenmusic.com ), which claims, among other things, that the members met at a seminar for underachieving child prodigies.

``Do you know how many people approach us and ask about the genius support clinic?" says Heller, after briefly pretending to defend the far-fetched factoids. ``Every time that stuff gets paraphrased and regurgitated, it gets further from the truth."

One thing is true: Aberdeen City is a grand, modern rock band. While it shares its post-punk brethren's fondness for sharp angles and dark moods, the group also embraces soaring melodies and wide-screen emotion. Parker calls his compositions ``fast, sad songs."

The foursome made a conscious decision to limit the scope of the arrangements on ``The Freezing Atlantic" to layers they could re - create onstage with two guitars, bass, and drums. But there's a lushness and a drama to many of the songs that transcend typical four-piece rock fare, and an aspiration to greatness that doesn't always make its mark but reveals a young band equipped with all the building blocks.

That makes Aberdeen City a perfect fit for Red Ink, which essentially functions as the music industry equivalent of a minor league baseball team.

``The way it works is Columbia Records [one of several Sony labels] stands by the sidelines. They sit and watch and assist in light-handed ways, and at the right time the band would move up to Columbia," explains Jim Scordamaglia, the band's manager. ``There's no specific time when that happens; it can be landing a tour, things happening at radio, strong album sales. It's a logical trajectory because the band isn't really ready to be on a major label. So we can grow it like an indie but with funding from the top and a plan to move up."

Aberdeen City formed in the dorms at Boston College. Heller (sociology and film studies) and McCaffrey (communications and French), both from Chicago, had played in high school bands together. Parker (literature and theater) is also from Chicago, but while the other two were spewing garage rock, he was busy perfecting concerti, and their paths didn't cross. McLaughlin (physics) was a latecomer to the band, as was Scordamaglia (marketing). They all graduated in 2001 except McLaughlin, who finished in 2004.

The band's first public performance was in January of 2001, at Great Scott in Allston. They brought their own PA system and played covers of Beck, Lou Reed, Michael Jackson, Prince, and the Smiths for three hours. Six months later Aberdeen City had a full set of original material and was filling the downstairs room at the Middle East -- an uncommonly swift ascent on the local scene, but Parker plays it down.

``We were plugged in to a ton of kids" through BC, he says, ``and if you can bring 300 kids into a club, what do they care what you sound like?"

In fact, it wasn't until Aberdeen City started generating buzz on the Internet and in other parts of the country that its stock began to rise on the local scene.

``Once we started touring and once the record had a label [the band signed with Dovecote, a New York-based indie, in March of last year], all of a sudden we were really being noticed in Boston," says Heller. ``It took a while to feel like we were really a name people in the local scene knew."

Aberdeen City self-released a six-song EP, ``We Learned by Watching," in 2003, and then spent three weeks in the winter of 2005 making ``The Freezing Atlantic" with producer Nic Hard, who's worked with the Church and the Bravery. The album's first single, ``God Is Going to Get Sick of Me," won a Boston Music Award before it had even been released, and ``The Freezing Atlantic" was voted local album of 2006 by Boston Phoenix readers.

Lillywhite received the album last September, on his first day of work at Columbia.

``I listened to the CD and I was going, `This can't be. It's my first day.' I was very wary," Lillywhite says. ``I put it away and a week later I took it out, and it was really really good, even though I willed it not to be. So I went to see them live in November. The next time they played in New York I got some heavyweights down from the company, and it was the worst gig I'd ever seen. There's a comparable U2 story. They didn't play well. The singing was bad."

Lillywhite -- who in 1980 produced ``Boy," the debut album from then-unknown U2, as well as ``October" and ``War" -- stuck to his guns and offered Aberdeen City a record deal early this year. He did, however, think that ``God Is Going to Get Sick of Me" and ``Another Seven Years," the album's opening track, needed tweaking.

``I wanted Brad to get more of an attitude in the vocals, more like he was telling a story rather than being a part of the sound," says Lillywhite, who also recommended bumping up the song keys. ``So I went in and scared the living daylights out of them. I have a few tricks up my sleeve. And it really did work. These are songs that can be played on the radio."

Unfortunately, if WBCN's local music director Shred is right, Aberdeen City will have to figure out how to reach an audience beyond the rock 'n' roll airwaves -- whose commercial clout, he says, is in decline.

``Rock radio doesn't break bands anymore. Pop radio breaks bands. I think they're fantastic, but it's going to be an uphill battle," says Shred. ``If they can get a song picked up, hopefully that'll be enough. It's up to them."

And us, believes Lillywhite, who concludes with a remark that sounds an awful lot like instructions.

``I would like Boston to take ownership of this band," he says, ``and really do a good job of breaking them."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.