There are several ways in which you may have heard about Rooney, and they are not proud of many of them. Perhaps you were watching “The O.C.” one night and heard their song playing in the background. Maybe you saw them open for Kelly Clarkson or the Jonas Brothers. Or you could have even been so obsessed with the movie “Princess Diaries” that you Googled the male lead you didn’t recognize and learned that he is not only the brother of Jason Schwartzman, but also the lead singer of the band Rooney.
But at the Middle East in Boston on Dec. 13, it would be hard to imagine their music fitting in anywhere but a tiny club filled with quite the motley crew. From preteens and their dads to college students looking for a break from studying for finals, it’s clear that Rooney doesn’t exactly fit in anywhere else. In an interview with The Eagle, drummer and vocalist Ned Brower acknowledged this fact.
“With the touring and stuff we just kind of go out and try and make new fans,” he said. “We’ve never quite had one exact place where we fit in.”
The focus of the band’s “Wild One” tour is to promote a new four-song EP by the same name, currently being sold exclusively at the events. The new tracks represent a change in the band’s direction. After many years on a major label, they’ve gone independent, allowing them to have more creative freedom.
“We basically spent this year recording a whole bunch of music, and we had more than a records worth of material we really felt good about,” Brower said. “We’ve got this four-song CD, ‘Wild One,’ and then we have another 12-song record [coming out] next year and it’s all different material — it’s not one of those rip-off ‘buy the four singles ahead of time’ — I hate that.”
The “Wild One” EP is a like a breath of fresh air. The first track, “Suckceed,” is the big hit of the disc. It brings together that old Rooney sounds fans love, strips it down to the bare bones of production and builds it up again with harmonies and instrumental skill. “I Don’t Understand” and “The Days Keep Going By” continue to impress, but they don’t stand our nearly as much as “Suckceed.” “Wild One,” the title track, is a clear diversion from Rooney’s traditional route. With Brower taking the lead vocals, Schwartzman’s signature sound is immediately wiped away, and it almost sounds as though this is an entirely different band — a risk that would not have been condoned by a major label.
“We self-produced our new record and the EP, also, so I think the production is a little bit hipper, a little more organic and you can hear a lot of performance of the new recordings,” Brower said of the changes in freedom the band’s independent status has given them. “They’re mixed a little more aggressively, like louder harmonies, louder solos, stuff like that. That’s just a product of us kind of making the stuff how we envisioned it, I guess.”
The new-found confidence of the band was evident in their performance. The 20-song set consisted of a mix of songs from their first and second albums, as well as the entirety of the new EP and even a Neil Young cover towards the end. While Schwartzman deftly changed the subject to “Wild One” when a drunk college student in the crowd yelled “Princess Diaries!” between songs, there were no other signs of this band being anything close to what they were advertised as on their major label.
Ten years after first forming Rooney, the guys were back where they started, performing to a small club of whoever decided to show up, and just generally playing their hearts out. And yet, despite all that they’ve been through, there, on that stage, a band has never looked more at home.
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
