Less a comeback than a rebirth, Clint Conley’s return to music is one of the most pleasant surprises in a good long while. As the bass player in the legendary Mission of Burma, Conley was responsible for writing and singing a disproportionate number of the band’s “hits”; though by his own token, he wrote no more than “nine or 10” songs in the band’s four-year lifespan, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” and “Peking Spring” have more than weathered the nearly two decades since Burma split up. In fact, the band’s legend has only grown, to the point where a handful of unexpected reunion shows earlier this year were sold-out, valedictory affairs.

All that, of course, is ancient history. What's far more exciting is that Conley is writing again, and he has a new band and a self-titled album, Consonant (Fenway Recordings), to prove it. Formed with members of Come and The New Year, the Bostonian quartet ranges from spasmodic fury to delicate lyricism, highlighting a new melancholy in Conley's songwriting. If you didn't check the album's credits, you'd never guess the band's leader was in his 40s, a tribute both to Conley's adaptability and to the enduring power of Burma's sharp-edged, fragmented sound.

Though from the confluence of Burma's reunion shows and Consonant's appearance on the scene it might seem that Conley cleverly orchestrated his own media blitz, the burst of activity has perhaps surprised no one more than Conley himself. It began last year, in February, when Conley returned from playing a show with former Burma-mate Peter Prescott's The Peer Group in New York. There had been a handful of such one-shot appearances over the years, and this was, by Conley's account, "not that great a gig," but, he recalls by phone, "something about it jarred some nut loose in my head." Never "a casual strummer," Conley eyed his old guitar case as he put his bass away. "I thought, ŒWow, I wonder if that thing even has strings on it?' I pulled it out, and it had strings, and I strummed a little and I strummed a little more, and I kept it out."

Conley then started digging through tapes of fragments he'd recorded in the year after Burma's breakup, songs he'd had trouble finishing because of his ambivalence about where to go next. "I started going in deeper, deeper and a new little part would come up -- and within two weeks, all sorts of new stuff gushed out. I was astonished, because for years and years I hadn't done anything [musical] and often sort of wondered, ŒThat's weird -- where did it go?' Was it real? Was it an accident I wrote a few songs people liked? Maybe it was just some spasm of the brain, some weird quirk of electrons or something running through my nerves."

Regardless of origin, the quasi-manic songwriting binge continued through spring and into the summer. Conley, a TV producer and father of two, found himself rising as early as 2 a.m. to write songs in the pre-dawn hours, and before long he'd turned out more than he had in Burma's entire lifespan.

There was just one problem: Fond as he remains of Burma's music, Conley can't recall his old lyrics without wincing. "A lot of them are pretty hard to sing," he admits, "They're very, very undergraduate. Too many philosophy courses.

"In a perfect world," he says, he would have gotten himself both "a lyricist and a singer, to really do the songs justice," but he settled for the former: poet Holly Anderson, who'd collaborated with Conley as far back as Mission of Burma's "Mica." Beginning with a stack of Anderson's poems, Conley would focus on likely phrases or passages, then search for appropriate music, sometimes filling in the blanks himself, sometimes sending Anderson tapes with nonsense syllables where new words were needed. "She writes so personally, so nakedly and honestly about all the things I never would have had the guts to write about in Burma: desire, loss, really personal stuff," Conley says. And eventually, he found himself drawing inspiration from Anderson's lyrics and writing his own, to the point where five of Consonant's 13 songs are largely all his. "I really took strength from her writing," he adds. "It inspired me to write a little more honestly."

Conley mentions several times that he has "a full life" and has no plans to take Consonant on the road for more than the occasional long weekend. (Given that between them, bandmates Chris Brokaw, Matt Kadane and Winston Braman are in about 7,000 other bands, their availability is an issue as well.) But he continues to write, and just this past week sent a new set of tapes to Anderson for further collaboration. "I'm thrilled that it's coursing through my veins again," he says, although he's still perplexed at his own resurgence. "You ever see that movie Charly, where they give the retarded guy some drugs and he's brilliant for a while, and then the little control mouse dies? I keep thinking, if I had a little control mouse, I'd be looking at it pretty closely."

Consonant will play Sat., May 11, 8 p.m., $14, with Luna, at the Trocadero, 10th and Arch sts., 215-922-LIVE, www.thetroc.com.

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June 6, 2002
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