Kevin Bronson on November 30th, 2009

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Only a couple of years ago, Michael Bauer was making music to feed his twentysomething angst. Now, fronting the L.A. quartet Useless Keys, he’s making music that mirrors our unsettling times.

“John Lennon said art should be a reflection of the time period you live in, and I think what we’re doing now does,” Bauer says. “There’s an dark current of uncertainty everywhere. What we’re doing sounds foreboding, and I hope that the ominous quality captures what it’s like to be an American in 2009.”

• ||| Exclusive download: “White Noise”

The foursome’s debut EP, which will be out after the first of the year, is the stuff of late nights and distant horizons, taut and expansive and cinematic and not a little bit Floydian. Its title is “Is the Painting Changing?” – and no matter whether the metaphorical painting is, it’s certain that Bauer, who led the Fugazi-inspired trio the Front until the band broke up on Jan. 1, 2008, has. He calls it a “natural progression,” but it’s more a startling metamorphosis, one that Bauer attributes to the friendship and tutelage of guitarist Michael Regilio.

“The Front was the band where I drank whiskey, turned up my guitar real loud and shouted into the microphone,” he says. “In Useless Keys, I’m actually conscious of the whole package … It’s just maturing, I guess.”

Regilio was a driving force in the underrated L.A. power-pop band the Green and Yellow TV. After their respective former bands disintegrated in ’08, Bauer and Regilio would get together for lessons and jams sessions. “I saw Michael as someone I could learn a lot from – he went to Berklee, and he’s just a much better guitar player than I am,” Bauer says. “We started making demos in his bedroom, but we had no aspirations. He had something going on, I had something going on. … But then his project broke up, and I needed to plunge myself into something.”

The pair hooked up with drummer Rory Modica and bassist Guylaine Vivarat, and from their first show at Spaceland it was evident Useless Keys were a band to watch. Recent shows in New York, including one supporting the Rifles, went well, and they’ve been recording with producer Sheldon Gomberg (Rick Parker’s mix adds to the psychedelic vibe). The quartet is aiming high on its full-length album.

“Some people just record 12 songs and call it an album, but I’d like to do something more thought out,” Bauer says. “The albums I love are ones that have movement throughout, that are an experience from beginning to end. I like the kind of album you’d want to be listening to if you were driving down a two-lane road in the middle of the desert … New Mexico, 2 in the morning, with lightning-spiderwebs across the sky.”

“White Noise” is a good start.

||| Live: Useless Keys, supported by Samuel Stewart, Twinfight and Wrong Way Driver, plays Spaceland on Wednesday.

Photo by Laurie Scavo