His name is big, and so is his potential

After tough times, songwriter looks ahead

NEW YORK - Not so long ago, I saw Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - he of the outsize name and matching ambition - play a small rock club near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. For the occasion, he had brought along a new four-piece band. The musicians were still getting used to one another, and the set was governed by a sort of fractious energy; if one arrangement threatened to come undone, Robinson yowled louder and with less purpose.

By the time the band lurched into the closing number, the lyrics had given way to a series of striated, minor-key yelps, and a few audience members grew visibly uneasy.

"Sometimes I want to do a song that's new, even if all the pretty words aren't finished," Robinson told me after the show. "The other night, I did one without any lyrics at all. People get angry. I go back and forth - occasionally, I feel bad. But live, it's the syntax that matters. Mostly, I just go for it. If you're not going for it, you're just a guy with a PowerPoint presentation, talking about things he doesn't care about. "

He paused to sign a T-shirt for a fan. Printed across the front were six words in block letters: "Miles Benja min Anthony Robinson Is Dead."

"I designed those," Robinson muttered sheepishly, ducking his head. Around New York, the mythic reputation of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, who plays at T.T. the Bear's Place tomorrow with Damien Jurado (see story above), is already deeply entrenched. He's the 25-year-old kid endorsed by TV on the Radio and Grizzly Bear - two of the biggest bands in the overheated indie troposphere.

He's the veteran of a nasty drug problem; the dude who packed in from Oregon and ended up sleeping on the boardwalk at Coney Island. He's the prolific maestro of a gazillion meandering, verbose folk rock singles, and a performer who ticks off as many fans as he attracts. He's the brain behind a monster, self-titled epic released on Say Hey Records and the author of two additional, as-of-yet unreleased discs that are attracting serious interest from the bigger indie labels.

As Robinson himself admits, with that strange mix of braggadocio and demurral that marks a would-be star, the sharks are circling. The blood is in the water.

"People like to feel that suffering is the only truth, and that's the only place where real beauty can come from," says Kyp Malone, the frontman of TV on the Radio. "That comes from rock 'n' roll and all the archetypes - the geniuses dead at 27, all strung out. Miles has a lot of that in him. He's also really, really smart. I feel like whatever he wants, he can have it. Or he can blow it. Either way, he's added something to my life already. My life has been enriched."

Robinson grew up in the Pacific Northwest where he wrote some early songs on an unplugged electric guitar; he "hated everyone and hated school." Briefly, he joined a "band that couldn't decide whether to be called Cruising or Running on Empty. The bassist had stage fright and could only play the outro to 'Freebird.' At the school talent show, I got up on stage and just started howling."

After graduation, Robinson toyed with getting a job at the local gas station, but instead accepted a spot at New York University. He arrived in Manhattan "thinking it'd be Lou Reed just walking around the Village." Instead, Robinson found a glut of rock shows, a lot of good parties, and a lot of drugs. This was around 2000, when the now-overripe New York scene was just reaching full ballast.

"I knew I wanted to be a recording artist," Robinson said, baring a lopsided grin. "There were some diversions, but I knew that I loved making music, and that was enough."

And yet the background noise swallowed him whole: By the summer after his sophomore year, Robinson was homeless and mired in addiction. He shuttled between friends' couches and park benches before shipping back to Oregon to pull himself together.

When he returned to New York, it was with "a road map that I intended to follow," he said. He had a sheaf of lyrics that recalled the emotional and physical transience of his bad summer, and for the first time, he had the requisite resolve. In 2006, Robinson and Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear finished work on a handful of ramshackle ballads, most of which were recorded at Robinson's home. The self-titled collection is a relic of the time when everything came crashing down, retold in a jittery, breathless alto - a diary of the bloody trip up from rock bottom.

"I ain't going dancing, cause I can't even breathe," Robinson announces on the shambling "Who's Laughing." The disc's opener, "Buriedfed," is less coy: "Tried to patch it up with tape and twine/ Baby, I just break everything that's mine." Seconds later, Robinson cracks the murmured verse into full-throated elegy. The cymbals crash, the singing turns to shouting, the song hurtles into dissonance before returning to the hushed melody.

For two years, the album collected dust, as label interest waxed and waned; this year, Robinson and Taylor finally managed to get it out. But in the interim, Robinson had been writing extensively, recording music with Malone and other Brooklyn-based friends. This puts him in an uncomfortable position: touring behind an album that already feels ancient, while shelving his enthusiasm for the fresher material he'd rather perform.

"If there's a song that doesn't reflect the way I feel now, I won't play it live," Robinson said. "Then again, everyone develops their own metaphorical language. Situations are largely interchangeable. So if some songs don't feel dated, it's because they were written with a deeper sentiment than my biography. They have a sort of universality."