The Muffs are back, happier than ever

Even though the punk-pop trio the Muffs are headed straight for Hurricane Ivan, singer-guitarist Kim Shattuck sounds positively giddy. Bassist Ronnie Barnett and drummer Roy McDonald, her bandmates in the van headed from a show in Houston to the next night's gig in Atlanta, don't sound nearly as chipper or particularly thrilled with the prospect of a face-to-face meeting with Mother Nature. Then again, matching Shattuck's merry mood these days might be impossible.

It's been five years since the Muffs -- a Los Angeles-spawned tornado of tart-tongued salvos wrapped in speedy tempos and Shattuck's gleeful guitar hooks -- last released an album, and four years since the band last played shows as part of the barnstorming multi-artist Warped tour. Until now, that is. With a new label and a new album in stores entitled "Really Really Happy," the Muffs have hit the road for a club tour that brings them to T.T. the Bear's tonight.

"These songs are more optimistic than I've ever written in my entire life," Shattuck says brightly about bouncy tracks like "A Little Luxury," which celebrates the simple power of a hug (but without a cloying, Up With People vibe). "I was surprised by that, because that wasn't what drove my lyrics before. I'm in a different place emotionally." When Shattuck says the disc's title is not meant to be sarcastic, it's tough not to believe her. Her zeal comes through her cellphone loud and clear, hurricane or no hurricane.

"I haven't been on the road like this in five years, so this is fun," Shattuck says. "We all became excited about being in a band again, which is more than important. If you're not excited, then forget about it. Who needs it? But we're having a blast." Until recently, whether there was any blast left to the band -- in fact, whether there was even any band left -- was anybody's guess, including Shattuck's.

When they first hit, in 1993, with their self-titled Warner Bros. debut, the Muffs were among a spate of noisy new rock bands that major labels were signing by the bushel during the alternative-rock boom. The Muffs' thrifty bubble-punk approach and love-lost anthems drew quick comparisons to the Ramones. The group's next effort, 1995's "Blonder and Blonder," was a snazzy distillation of gnarly punk bluster and petulant pop smarts and won them an even larger following.

"I loved that record," recalls singer-guitarist Meredith Byam of the Boston pop-punk combo Heavy Stud, whose early work was compared to the Muffs. "I listened to it a lot when I was starting to write songs. It had hooks and it had [guts], and those were the two things I like in songwriting -- especially when women are involved. [`Blonder and Blonder'] was totally full-on, full-tilt from front to back." Byam recalls a live-in-the-studio radio appearance the Muffs made at Fort Apache, where she once worked.

"Those shows were always at noon, which is kind of hard, because it's hard to rock at noon," she says. "Most bands, when they came in, were on their best behavior, but Kim was being totally punk. She was squealing feedback from her guitar and being really snarly."

Heavy touring followed heady buzz, but after they released a third album, 1997's "Happy Birthday to Me," the Muffs -- like so many other artists who had been swept up in the major label signing frenzy a few years earlier -- found themselves dropped. A couple of more Muffs albums on as many indie labels followed, but for Shattuck, something felt distressingly different, and she decided to take a break.

"I was just getting tired of the grind of it and needed to rest, mostly," she says. "But deep down, I really didn't want to quit. We're like a family and have known each other for over 15 years."

Shattuck says she never stopped writing songs during the group's hiatus, and many of them show up among the 17 tack-sharp tracks that make up "Really Really Happy." She even joined the Beards, a band that played spare song arrangements, an experience Shattuck credits with "making me feel good about music again." But she also realized how much she missed the Muffs. Around this time, a couple of friends and fellow musicians, Anna Waronker (formerly of That Dog) and the Go-Go's Charlotte Caffey, told Shattuck that they were starting a label called Five Foot Two Records. Would the Muffs be interested in putting out a new record?

"It was the best possible situation, with people we respect and friends," Shattuck says. "It couldn't have been more perfect and totally came at the right time." She added that Waronker and Caffey (who are sisters-in-law, having married the brothers of the LA band Redd Kross) "have good taste in music and understand songwriting."

"It's not right that the Muffs don't have records out," says Caffey. "I don't like that, and so I felt I had to do something about it." Caffey was always a Muffs fan but knew that the years Shattuck spent away from the stage had made her unsure about her ability to return. "She was really scared, she hadn't played a show in years, and being a frontperson [of a rock band], that's a lot of responsibility," Caffey says.

For Shattuck, however, the job requirements associated with leading a high-energy rock band have at last become fun again. And she shares her new employers' sense of adventure concerning what happens next with the Muffs and their new label. She's enjoying the here and now, although she acknowledges feeling surprise sometimes when she's peeling off a guitar solo onstage, with the bass and drums flailing around her. "Oh yeah, we talk about that all of the time -- that we're still doing this after 13 years," Shattuck says, punctuating the point with a laugh that's both proud and incredulous. "Who knew?"