The many faces of Ultimate Fakebook.

"She don't even know me name. She won't even look my way. In a word, I'm a dog, and it chills me to the bone. All I want is just to walk her home."

Take this sentiment, add a simple crunching guitar-riff, loud drums and the occasional stretch into falsetto, and you've got the formula for perfect power-pop. It's how Ultimate Fakebook's new CD This Will Be Laughing Week kicks off. For fourteen tracks it maintains a level of whimsical, un-ironic rah-rah, a love and a need to rock; part of a continuing resurgence of good, smart indie power-pop rising like a grass-roots phoenix from the ashes of dead bands like Green Day and Weezer. Along with Tsar, Fountains of Wayne and A, list Ultimate Fakebook as saviors of geek-chic wanna-be Cheap Trick or XTC. I had the good fortune of speaking recently with Bill McShane about "This Will Be Laughing Week," the need to rock on real drums, and Xanadu.

Jordan Hoffman: Hi, is this Bill?

Bill McShane: Yeah, I can barely hear you.

JH: Where are you? Is this a cell phone?

BMcS: Yeah, we're in the van driving through----

He got cut off. I called back.

JH: Hi, Bill?

BMcS: Yeah, I don't get it, we're driving through South Dakota, it's all flat . . . I don't know where the interfer—

He got cut off again. Third time is a charm?

JH: Bill?

BMcS: I think we hit a good patch now. Let's talk quick.

JH: Okay. I wanted to tell you how much I dug the new record. It's a lot of fun, but pure.

BMcS: That's exactly what we're going for. We want to be fun, we want to write good pop tunes you can sing along to, we want to be silly at times, but not ironic. It's all light, you know, but it's real, some of the songs get personal . . . but, you know it's stupid not to try and entertain . . .

JH: Well, that's pretty much my aesthetic these days. And I think this new record really achieves that.

BMcS: That's great to hear, man, thanks.

JH: So let me start with the obvious, like what were your influences when making the album?

BMcS: Well, the goal was to make loud rock. And to get people to sing along. We strive to reach moments of arena rock purity in our live act, and you need to tap into something to get that out of a crowd. I think the attitude we try to get on this album, even if you don't hear it all the time, are acts like Cheap Trick, Guided By Voices, Replacements, Elliot Smith, Wilco, Supergrass—that's the wavelength we're operating on most of the time.

JH: What kind of stuff did you listen to as a kid?

BMcS: Shit, you know, top 40 of the day, hair metal, I mean, you know, I had Dokken records at one time in my life. I was from a small town in the mid-west so, you know, it was tough to explore sometimes.

JH: The name Ultimate Fakebook makes me think that you just do cool cover tunes. Do you ever do covers in the live act?

BMcS: It's funny, most people don't even know what a fakebook is. We didn't even know at first, we just heard the word and liked it for the name of the group. We don't really do too many covers. Sometimes we do 'em, you know, everybody does, but we don't want to get labeled as one of those novelty acts that you go to see for the wacky covers.

JH: When you do 'em, which covers do you do?

BMcS: I'm not gonna' tell you, 'cause you'll print it and make it seem like we do wacky covers all the time.

JH: I won't say anything, I promise.

Ultimate Fakebook. Rocking.

BMcS: Well, when we're really feeling it, like, if it's a home town crowd, we do "Alex Chilton" by the Replacement, or we go nuts on some of ELO's soundtrack to Xanadu.

JH: Xanadu, eh? You were into that?

BMcS: Oh, God yes. Obsessed with roller skating and the whole bit.

JH: Well, let's talk about your songs. "Far, Far Away" is an interesting cultural time capsule.

BMcS: That's kinda what it's become, right? It was written in '97, and I was just bubbling with hype for the new Star Wars film. So it was written from a fan's perspective who may be a little to excited about the movie coming out soon.

JH: I thought Phantom Menace really blew.

BMcS: It was disappointing. I still saw it a few times, and will probably watch it a million times on video. You know . . . but, it's cool, I never mention "Star Wars" in the song, and some people never really get that that's what the song is about.

JH: Well, it's cool, 'cause it works on a broader level, but if you catch the joke, it's cool, too. "Real Drums" is super as a manifesto song.

BMcS: We believe that people should rock on real drums.

JH: Similar is Brok˙n Nėedle. "We're that cool!" is a remarkable sentiment.

BMcS: We tried to capture the essence of the kids in the garage forming a band after school.

JH: Thus the umlauts.

BMcS: Precisely. And the refrain, "Are you read to rock? It's not a question!" We've always been obsessed with rock. We've been wanting to do this our whole lives. It's the typical dream.

JH: Is that the characters in the song, or Ultimate Fakebook.

BMcS: They're not that different. We exaggerate in the song, but, you know, it's not high art. We're not going for Radiohead-style mope or post-grunge or any of that . . . it's not what moves us.

JH: The use of falsetto adds a lot of emotion

BMcS: That just came out of me. I don't know anything about singing. I'm not even the band's original singer. But it's just the way it's been working.

JH: Real quick: treble or bass?

BMcS: Treble.

JH: Beatles or Kinks?

BMcS: Ouch. I have to choose? Uh . . . Beatles. Yeah, Beatles.

JH: Car or Public Transportation?

BMcS: Drive the car.

JH: There ya go. Well listen, thanks for talking with me. I really dig the record. Good luck out there, and we'll catch you when you come to New York.