BASS-IC: Sutton remains the quiet one in his own band.

Everybody knows that a bass player in a band is supposed to be the quiet one. And local bassist Pete Sutton seems to have taken that role to heart. He’s played in a slew of popular bands, mostly of the brainy-pop variety: the Barnies, Baby Ray, Trona, and the Willard Grant Conspiracy, plus instrumental combos Electrolux and the Ray Corvair Trio. In each case, he’s been the smiling guy in the shadows, letting the lead guitarist and the singer get all the glory.

More recently, Sutton made his big move and formed Temper, the first outfit he’s written for and led — and now he’s the quiet one in his own band. The first thing you notice is the serene presence of the two frontwomen, keyboardist Carlene Barous and guitarist Skyla Fay (late of Din and Prickly, respectively), who define the sound with their pristine vocal harmonies. Nancy Delaney (also of Willard Grant) is a precise drummer with a feel for melody. Sutton is once again the guy in the shadows. Indeed, most people who see Temper seem to assume that the two frontwomen wrote the songs.

And that doesn’t bother him. “If they want to think that, it’s fine. I never wanted to be a frontperson, definitely not a lead singer — I can carry a tune, but the singers we’ve got are far better. And I’d rather play bass anyhow.” But the idea of a band with two female singers was there before he decided who to recruit. “Most of my favorite bands have two singers — the Beatles, Pink Floyd, XTC — and I thought that it would be a nice twist on that to have the singers be female. I’d been listening to a lot of Dido and Air lately, so that was the challenge to myself, to see if I could do something more like that.”

Temper’s self-released album, Hang by Your Own Tail, is unusual in at least two respects: it’s a Boston pop album that puts the emphasis on vocals and has hardly any loud guitar or drums. And it’s a consistently pretty disc that doesn’t turn into wallpaper — credit that to a grasp of melody and dynamics. The occasional outbursts are subtle, but they’re there. And they favor natural drums and piano/organ sounds over loops and electronics; so the sound is closer to exotic models like Renaissance and later, darker Abba than to Air or Dido. (The one obvious comparison that does hold up is to Kate Bush, particularly the lusher sounds on her last couple of albums.)

The melancholy tone of the songs may also surprise anyone who knows Sutton as an upbeat character. “Yeah, I’m showing off my dark and sensitive side. It’s back to the old question of what there is that’s worth writing about. My lyrics tend to be on the grim side — God knows that in the world we live in today, you’ve got a bottomless well to pick from. That’s not who I am as a person, but it’s what goes into the lyrics. But then, some of the songs are just me trying to write in a certain style. ‘Day and Night’ [which seems to allude to a lost friendship] isn’t about anybody in particular; it was just my attempt to write a Lucinda Williams song.”

Having done the guy-rock thing for most of his career, Sutton is excited to have the new voices at his disposal. “Hey, I’m 40 years old and I’ve been playing guitar rock with guys for most of my life — time to give that a rest. Especially after doing Baby Ray — they’re the kings of deep and complex, so I wanted something simpler. I always want a catchy melody; that’s in my DNA and you can’t get away from that. And I wanted to put the vocals front and center, since I don’t see a lot of local bands doing that. Besides” — here he shifts into familiar wise-guy mode — “we all know that rock is dead. How many examples of that do you need?’

“Actually, we write all the songs and let Pete take all the credit,” jokes Fay when I catch up with the rest of the band at the Abbey Lounge. “No, he really has very specific ideas about what he wants — to the point where I can be saying, ‘Hey buddy, give me some room to breathe here.’ But it’s his baby and we all respect that. There are times when I’d know what the next chord would be if it were my song, but his always go somewhere different.”

“You have to work from a different part of the brain,” adds Barous, who wrote at least half the songs for her previous band, Din. “If you’re singing a song someone else wrote, you’re relinquishing some control, and that can be a good thing; you just have to make them your own. Of course I really like the songs, so that makes all the difference.”

So far, most of Temper’s gigs have been at garage-heavy shows — they played both the Prime Movers release party and last weekend’s Moving Targets reunion at the Abbey — so they’re bound to be the odd band out. Delaney: “That Prime Movers show was great — there was a sea of testosterone, and there was us. Whatever it is we’re doing, I don’t know if it’s ever been that fashionable in town.”

And were they were surprised by the emergence of Sutton’s darker side? Fay: “I can’t figure what all the songs are about. In fact, he’s always eager to tell us, and sometimes I wish he wouldn’t. I thought that ‘Tough Luck’ was an incredibly tragic song, but it turned out to be about something really banal [running into an ex-friend at a high-school reunion]. If I’m going to sing them, I’d rather make up for myself what they’re about.”

Barous makes a dramatic gesture. “Who knows who Pete Sutton really is? For all we know, he may be a complete sociopath.”

“But then,” Delaney adds, “anybody else would have probably kicked us all out of the band by now.”

On the Web
Temper: //www.bostontemper.com/