Change a "vital force" for Seattle band Pretty Girls Make Graves

How many times have you heard, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"?

It's not only a boring and stupid saying, it's not very rock 'n' roll. The rock way to think about things is, "Let's break it — and we'll worry about fixing it later."

That's pretty much the way Pretty Girls Make Graves (PGMG) set about making its third record. After a small-label debut, the Seattle indie-punk band signed with the respected Matador Records two years ago and released "The New Romance." The band's second recording won the hard-touring group quite a bit of national notice, and some raving reviews.

Alternative Press called it "at once daring and danceable," and Pitchfork declared, "The album exists in that scarcely inhabited rock-and-roll world where technical prowess coexists peacefully with clear and simple songcraft."

So for the band's third release, we should expect more of the same — two guitars blazing under singer Andrea Zollo's piercing calls to arms, right?

Wrong.

Guitarist Nathan Thelen quit to raise a kid, and PGMG decided no one else could begin to trade guitar lines with Jason Clark. The five-piece band, which includes drummer Nick DeWitt, then took it to another level, adding a keyboard player, Leona Marrs.

Bassist Derek Fudesco — you may remember him from Murder City Devils — brought Marrs into the fold. She played keyboards with Hint Hint, a once-hot band on Fudesco's Cold Crush Records. With Marrs struggling to keep up with songs written before she came along, PGMG started recording its third album. But after a few weeks in the studio, they ditched it.

"We decided to scrap the whole thing and start afresh," Fudesco said this week by phone from Los Angeles.

The band also went with a relatively unknown new producer, Colin Stewart, a drastic change from Phil Ek, best known for his work with Modest Mouse and Built to Spill.

"We worked with Phil on the last two records, and decided to start totally over," Fudesco said. "We made a really different record."

The result is "Elán Vital" (which means "vital force"), released Tuesday. Fudesco proudly says it "has way more personality" than Pretty Girls' previous work.

Keyboard-fueled songs like "Private Pedestal" and "The Number" scamper off on different paths than the two-guitar highway of Pretty Girls past. As one early review (www.musicomh.com) noted, "It starts on the very edge of the canvas of 'the New Romance' and diffuses into an alluring nebula; part new wave, part post punk, but drifting further into alt-rock and even the odd shooting star of prog."

Speaking of different, Fudesco sings the lead on "Pictures of a Night Scene" — the first time in his multiple-band career that he has taken front vocals.

"I had written the music, the bass and drums and recorded it in my room to bring to the band," he said. "Then I wrote the lyrics and did a scratch vocal [demo], and I was going to give it to Andrea [to sing] — then it just made more sense for me to sing it."

Fudesco's singing turn comes on track No. 10, and it may be hard to get that far — no knock on the record, it's just that the opening track, "Nocturnal House," is so intensely intoxicating, it's tempting to just keep hitting the "repeat" button. That song also has been the show-opener of late, as PGMG has toured in London; Manchester, England; and Paris.

The road is a friend to Fudesco, who spent his formative years under the relentless sun of Fresno, Calif. Coming to the Northwest was a welcome change — until the rain got to him.

"If I didn't tour as much as I did I would move out of Seattle," he said with a laugh. "We didn't tour this winter, so I was here all winter — it was really bad."

He and Zollo are housemates in the north part of Capitol Hill, with a basement where many of the Pretty Girls' songs were born. The rest of the band lives within a few blocks, and the band also has a practice space in Georgetown.

Asked about PGMG's best and worst Seattle shows, Fudesco gave a rueful laugh.

"I'm going to come off as an (expletive), but I really don't like playing in Seattle," he said. "I can't tell you an amazing Seattle show we've had. We have great shows everywhere else, but I feel like every time we play Seattle, it's kind of blah."

Does the band put too much pressure on itself here?

"Of course — it's our hometown. I definitely way overthink it."

Pretty Girls Make Graves takes another shot at the hometown crowd with an in-store performance Saturday at Sonic Boom Records in Ballard (2209 N.W. Market St.). The free show is scheduled to start at 6 p.m.

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com