Friday, March 28, 2003 | 8:37 a.m.
It's a rite of passage for every aspiring British rock band: Crossing the Atlantic Ocean to tour America for the first time.
England's latest buzz band, the Music, made its inaugural trip to the States last year. And to hear singer Robert Harvey talk, the quartet handled the challenge with the same ease they have responded to everything else in their much-hyped four-year existence.
"We just came over with the same frame of mind as we always do in any new country we're playing. We just want to show people how we express ourselves through music," Harvey said in a recent telephone interview from his New York City hotel room.
Now the Music is back in America, visiting some of the cities they passed over last time around. Tonight at 7 the band makes its Las Vegas debut, opening for Australian "it" band the Vines at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.
The Music is touring behind its highly anticipated self-titled full-length debut album, which hit stores on Capitol Records Stateside last month, more than five months after it broke in England.
Listen to the disc for the first time, and you might think you have the band's sound nailed down by the end of its leadoff track, "The Dance." While guitarist Adam Nutter, bassist Stuart Coleman and drummer Phil Jordan lay down goth-esque background layers and hard-rock riffs, Harvey wails with a falsetto reminiscent of the hair-metal days of the 1980s.
But by the middle of Track Two -- the album's first single, "Take the Long Road and Walk it" -- it's apparent there's quite a bit more music in the Music's repertoire. As danceable rhythms creep into the song, Harvey proves he's far more than a Sebastian Bach clone, even transforming his delivery into something more akin to scat near the end of the song.
"We've all got very different influences. You can't point at one thing and say that's an influence on all of us, apart from life itself," Harvey, 19, said. "Obviously, the rhythm section provides a lot of the dance elements. And me and Adam are quite into stuff with a bit more melody. I was brought up on Motown and Adam listened to stuff like Fleetwood Mac."
Harvey and his bandmates -- all 19 or 20 years old now -- began jamming together while in high school. Before long the Music was self-releasing EPs and singles and earning a reputation for its blistering live show, prompting the BBC to dub the foursome "the best unsigned band in Britain."
Harvey said the attention was entirely unexpected.
"We didn't realize what all the fuss was," he said. "We just did it because we enjoyed it, and then people started saying, 'You can do it and travel around the world.' And we said, 'Sounds cool.' "
In recent months British music magazines have also taken to comparing the Music to England's most revered hard-rock outfit: Led Zeppelin. Harvey said that while the band is complimented, the assumption that Zeppelin has been a major influence is inaccurate.
"Zeppelin is something that we've all started listening to recently, not when we were doing the album," Harvery said. "Stu was brought up on Zeppelin, but no one else was into it until everyone started going, 'Oh, you sound like Zeppelin.' "
The Music recently completed a series of shows opening for another British buzz band, Coldplay, a mellow group unlikely to drawn any comparisons to Led Zeppelin. Harvey said he and his bandmates are eager to get back on the road with the rowdy Vines.
"With Coldplay, the venues we were playing were all kind of seated, and their musical style is kind of mellow," Harvey said. "Now it's back to the sweaty clubs, with people diving on each other and stuff like that."
Harvey said the war with Iraq hasn't yet affected the Music's tour schedule.
"We just keep going until we're told it's time to go home," Harvey said. "As long as we can keep bringing that little bit of joy to people, that's all that matters."
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