Smarts, patience fuel the Bon Savants

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand or appreciate the Bon Savants. Good taste, and a predilection for Pulp and the Magnetic Fields , will do. Besides, the Boston band's already got one in singer-guitarist Thom Moran, who splits his time between writing songs and conducting engineering research at MIT.

Both interests require smarts, obviously, but a fair amount of dedication and patience, too. "Post-Rock Defends the Nation," the Savants' exquisite full-length debut (the release of which they'll celebrate with a pair of shows tonight and tomorrow at Great Scott), took a year to see the light of day, even though songs from the independently released album have been floating around the ether for some time.

"We've known what we have for a while now, and we're excited about it," says Moran, 30, of the album. Talking by phone, he's surprisingly chipper following a post-show, all-day drive from Minneapolis to guitarist Craig Hendrix's parents' home in Pennsylvania for a belated Thanksgiving dinner. "We're definitely still at the wide-eyed stage where it was pretty cool to walk into a random music store in Omaha last week and see Bon Savants [CDs] in the bins and say, 'Hey, there we are!' " Then, with a comic's timing, he adds, "It'll be another thing when they start selling them."

As much as Moran says he'd "gladly like to go full time into the band as soon as I can," he's not quitting his part-time day job at MIT -- a gig that followed the songwriter's hitch as a flight mechanic in the US Air Force and his college stint studying physics at UMass-Amherst.

"One of the reasons I studied physics was that it was challenging, and so it kept my interest," says Moran. "In a lot of ways, being in a band is the same thing. It involves lots of work that has nothing to do with music at all, so really, the most challenging thing to do is be in a band." Moran claims that he started Bon Savants because it was "the hardest thing" he could think of doing . "It's funny -- when things are comfortable, I tend to get really unhappy," he says. "I hate routine."

The band's climb up the rungs of the local rock ladder has been anything but. Earlier this year, Moran was named best male vocalist in The Boston Phoenix's annual readers' poll, and the group has landed coveted slots opening for high-profile acts such as the Editors, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Feist, and French Kicks , among others. And just last month, in a feature previewing the Savants' debut, Spin.com praised the band for "applying generous helpings of guitar-fuzz and sailing melodies to a set of tunes equally suited to early-morning transit as they are to late-night dancing."

Indeed, "Post-Rock" is a labyrinthine wonder, a pulsing, shape-shifting landscape where breezy windows of pop restraint ("Between the Moon and the Ocean" ) open onto vast rooms of billowy space-rock excess ("Everyone" ) and chambers of sensory indulgence ("I Am the Atom Bomb" ). Moran's voice is a mix of a few of pop's more refined statesmen: a bit of Pulp's Jarvis Cocker here, a dash of the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon there, and the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt reclining somewhere in the cocktail lounge, too. The music is no less sumptuous.

The band has recently added keyboardist Brian Hamilton to its core lineup of Moran, bassist David Wessel , drummer Andrew Dole , and Hendrix, who this past summer replaced original guitarist and cofounder Kevin Haley (who plays on the album but couldn't commit more time to the band). Moran and Haley started the Bon Savants a few years ago, after the two met and became friends during Moran's Air Force tenure in Germany. In fact, that era is reflected in the title track of the new album.

"The meaning of that song is about the experience of coming of age and being in the military," says Moran, who grew up in Sweet Home , Ore., and joined the Air Force as a way of escaping his small town, exploring the world, and financing a college education. "It's about being in Germany after the threat of Soviets rushing across the East German border in legions of tanks is gone and there's just thousands of teenagers to 20-something soldiers twiddling their thumbs. I was going to shows five, six nights a week and hearing all kinds of music. It was great."

BITS & PIECES Tonight It's never too early to lend a helping hand to folks in need, so with that in mind, the Boston pop band Harris has organized a series of preholiday benefit shows called "Sleep Tight XMas Night ." It gets underway tonight at Bill's Bar (guests include Medicated Kisses, Furvis, the Vershok, Static of the Gods , and Harris) and continues through the week at venues across town. All shows benefit Toys for Tots , Rosie's Place , and the Pine Street Inn . For complete listings and other details, go to sleeptightxmasnight.com . +/- (otherwise known as members of Versus ) is at the Middle East Upstairs. Entrain is at Johnny D's. Superhoney is at the Lizard Lounge. Tomorrow The Spurs swing into Johnny D's. Jabe is at the Lizard Lounge. Lucky 57 hosts a CD-release party at the Abbey Lounge. Tuesday New Model Army is at the Middle East Upstairs. El Vez is at the Paradise Rock Club . The Silver Lining kicks off a December residency at Toad. Ken Field's Revolutionary Snake Ensemble is at the Abbey. Wednesday Exene Cervenka and the Original Sinners headline the Middle East Upstairs. Thursday Midriff Records kicks off a December residency at P.A.'s Lounge with the Beatings . Alejandro Escovedo is at the Museum of Fine Arts.