Kevin Bronson on August 5th, 2010

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L.A. rockers Everest had their share of gut-wrenching, hair-pulling moments during the months they were making their sophomore album, “On Approach.” But the quintet must have swallowed hard when they got word that their label owner and The Man They Admire Most – Neil Young, for cryin’ out loud – said he’d like to talk to them about the mixes he’d heard.

“We heard that Neil drove Elliot [Roberts, his manager] around and listened to the CD three times in a row, then we heard we wanted us to come up and go through it track by track,” says frontman Russell Pollard, who had his doubts about the quick mixes the band had made anyway. “We ended up in an office, on a conference call, and Neil said, ‘I have a few things I want to say …'”

• ||| Exclusive download: “Unfortunate Sea (alternate mix)”

• ||| Also: Everest’s recent Daytrotter session.

“He had great advice,” says Everest bassist Elijah Thomson, who produced the tracks the band had laid down at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, a favorite locale of Tom Waits. “We’d made a lot of sophomore mistakes; there was too much stuff in there. He said, ‘You need to pick your moments’ – it was what you need to hear from a guy who’s been doing it for 40 years.”

Several rounds of whittling and an artful mixing job by Rob Schnapf later, “On Approach” (which came out in May on Warner/Vapor) revealed itself to be a rare beast – a straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll album with no obvious antecedents, American but not Americana, possessing the brawny guitars and sculpted arrangements to give it wide scope but the spirit and compassion to attest that it came from the tenderest of hearts.

The affirming anthem “Let Go” was immediately embraced by radio, and songs like “I’ve Had This Feeling Before” tremble with the kind of guitars that would make Everest’s label chief proud. The balladry is equally open-hearted, only from a different emotional perspective. “East Illinois” salutes the memory of the Fresno neighborhood where Pollard’s grandmother lived, and “Unfortunate Sea” is a chilling number about a doomed surfer.

“It’s inspired by a photo [drummer Davey Latter] showed me of a surfer about to be swallowed by a huge wave. It reminds you that anything can happen at any moment – when you kiss somebody goodbye, it could be the last time.

“The most meaningful thing Neil ever said to me was that he thought ‘Unfortunate Sea’ was a classic,” Pollard says. “In any of my daily doubts about what I’m doing, that’s a nugget that keeps me going.”

And doubts, Everest has had a few.

The two-month recording process tested everybody in the band – Pollard, Thomson, Latter and guitarists J. Soda and Joel Graves. “We had a lot of head-scratching moments up there,” Thomson says. “Your biggest enemy in the studio is self-doubt; you have to have a certain cockiness.”

You get the feeling, in person and in song, that the guys in Everest are more contemplative than cocky – and in a recording session that leads to a tendency to overthink. “There’s obviously a lot of pressure,” Thomson says. “Live, you play a show, and it’s a moment and it’s gone. But in a recording studio, that moment will be there forever.”

Pollard says the band was awed by the rustic setting of Prairie Sun, “and the Waits Room was one of the spookiest places I’ve ever tracked in. It seemed like it was always colder than the rest of the place, but we had this feeling when we walked in there that we could do anything.”

What Everest ended up doing isn’t quite re-invention , but it feels like renewal. Or at least one chapter.

“We called the album ‘On Approach’ because what we’re doing is a process,” Pollard says.”We’re not trying to sound like anything. … We just went the direction the songs took us.”

||| Live: Everest plays tonight at the Bootleg Theater.