Kevin Bronson on October 17th, 2008

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There’s a point about halfway through the first batch of songs to emerge from the Long Beach quartet Two Guns when a certain optimism surfaces. Everything’s gonna be all right. It’s the same vague sentience that set in after I heard Wilco’s “Summerteeth,” or, more recently, “Ghost Stories” by L.A.’s Everest: Just because your relationships suffer from faulty wiring doesn’t mean you’re powerless.

“That is kind of a constant theme through the 11 songs, certainly lyrically anyway — you’re torn down, you regroup then you move on,” says Kevin Poush, the principal architect of the songs he flushed out with bandmates Chris Fudurich, Aaron Bradford and Adam Ferry.

• ||| Download: “One Direction” [Buzz Bands Preview]

If those names sound familiar, it’s because Poush, Bradford and Ferry were members of the indie rock quintet Fielding. Fudurich is the producer who made Fielding’s 2005 album (along with many other credits). Fielding’s frontman Eric Balmer is continuing to make music under the quintet’s name, with his former bandmates’ blessing, Poush says.

But the band’s split and “a lot of other relationship questions” inspired Poush to begin sketching out songs in mid-2007. “It’s kind of an overall picture of the last few years, when the band broke up, I witnessed my parents’ long marriage dissolve … a lot of things,” Poush says. “There are a couple things that made my girlfriend say, ‘Is that about me?’ But it wasn’t, necessarily. Damien Jurado is married but I heard him say once that when he writes he thinks about his previous girlfriends.”

The album — which the band hopes to release in November — ranges from gauzy California pop to shoegazey Americana and benefits from a host of contributors, including Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley. “Chris had sent some of our early stuff out, and Kay wanted to be a part of it,” Poush says. The harmonies”  on three songs from Hanley (and one apiece from Sarah Ellquist and Maggie Kim) add to the album’s upbeat tenor.

“When these songs started, they were a lot more simplified, a lot more alt-country,” Poush says, “but then it ended up where it is. We’re happy with it.”

||| Live: Two Guns perform Sunday at the Knitting Factory’s Alterknit Lounge, Oct. 23 at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa and Nov. 11 at Spaceland.

Photo by Jennie Warren