The Oranges Band's last album, The World and Everything In It, is the kind of record most music writers would feel obligated to say is “pretty good.” It’s got catchy songs, but no hook is too forceful; it’s got fuzzy, but stately guitars and giddy, but assured performances; and the singer has a little of that British-circa-1981 thing going on. And he’s singing about summer, and girls, and often about girls in the summer who get you to do things you probably wouldn’t otherwise.

We’re supposed to like this sort of thing, sure, but we here at DCist have to admit to loving it. The album’s got a unique combination of nervy energy and tight arrangements – a restrained sort of spazz that perfectly fits those wistful, nostalgic remembrances.

All this really comes to a head in their live show. When we last caught up with them, they were the highlight of the DAM! Fest’s opening night, nailing their rockers (“Ride the Nuclear Wave”, “OK Apartment”) and breathing new life into their slower, more complex numbers. Suffice it to say, we were excited to hear the band was coming back to D.C. this Thursday and pretty damn giddy that lead singer Roman Kuebler agreed to chat with us ahead of the show.

Let it be said that Kuebler is a true optimist. In 2002, he booked a national tour for The Oranges Band before he had either a band or an album. But he found his band, knocked out a promising debut album, and hit the road. Two studio albums, a live and a studio EP later, they’re back in town to (their words) “blow the doors off” The Red and The Black on Thursday night.

This kind of enthusiasm is evident in Kuebler, who, despite his casual, laidback demeanor, is a true music academic. You can busy yourself reading press kits and band bios, but we like this little nugget: for this tour, Kuebler has brought along a collection of Billboard’s Top 100 from each of the past 50 years. For all his talk about how fun some of the goofier cuts are (Paul McCartney’s “Spies Like Us” he mentions, but warns us away, "I wouldn't even bother, it's horrendous”), he’s clearly dedicated himself to the compilation, studying and learning and copping licks here and there like any pop songwriter worth his salt, but also tirelessly pondering and toying with production and sound. They band now has their own equipment to record in his house. Kuebler’s already worked out some demos, which he describes as “all over the map, each song kinda develops on its own. There’s some more dancy, upbeat stuff, some proggish stuff, but they’re all just trying to be well-developed songs in their own right.”

The band still isn’t sure if the new album – to be finished in the spring, shopped around to labels at that point, and released in the fall – will have a common set of themes like the last one’s tales of endless, youthful summers. Of the lyric-writing process, he says, “It’s a little tricky, a bit daunting. It could be about anything in the whole world, but you’ve kinda got to restrict it somehow.” And some of the inspiration for the album may hit home with the DC-area crowd as well: “I saw a surf movie before writing that one, and it struck that chord and got me thinking about spending the summers down in Ocean City.”

And while the songs are uniformly great, things really take off in their live show. Guitarist Dan Black got voted Baltimore’s Best Band Member on the strength of his live sets, and drummer Dave Voyles steers the band with purpose and inventive tom-work. Asked once in an interview what his goal for The Oranges Band was, Kuebler replied, “Make good music, take it on the road....Our band started with the direct intention of traveling, and music was almost the means to the end.” For someone who’s spent so much of his recent life on the road – with The Oranges Band and also as a touring member of Spoon – he’s unassuming and laidback about where all this work might take him.

“We’ve got realistic expectations when we tour. I mean, we just want to construct our lives in a way that we’re able to do this, and in some ways success on its own is just the experience, the rest of it is gravy.” What’s more, for a band who titled a live tour EP 900 Miles of Fucking Hell, they’ve got some serious resistance.

As far as playing in D.C., one of the band’s goals is to get reconnected to their neighbors. “It’s kind of a labored relationship, not really natural,” Kuebler says, “but there’s been a lot of shows there, there’s a lot of energy right now. We’ve got some personal ties [guitarist Dan Black and Faye Malarkey have both lived in D.C.], but we want to pay a little more attention to the scene down here.”

As we close, we can’t help but dig for a little dirt, so we ask if Spoon’s Britt Daniel deliberately ripped off The Oranges Band’s “My Mechanical Mind” when he wrote “My Mathematical Mind”. There’s a pause, then Kuebler gives it to us straight: “Yeah, he jacked it from me, I’m pretty sure. I’ve got to get him to sign an affidavit or something.”

The Oranges Band w/ The Fake Accents
@ The Red and The Black
December 7, 2006 / Doors at 9 p.m., Music at 9:30
$8