Pitchfork

At the heart of the indie mindset is a profound disconnect between perception and actuality. The ideal: D.I.Y. ethics, an emphasis on art above marketability, and a purity of purpose that is resistant to fads and monetary influence. The reality: indie bands are receiving six-digit recording advances from major media conglomerates, and are just as ripe for demographic targeting, strategic media placement, and lifestyle branding as "mainstream" bands. Indie groups like The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse can be heard on teen dramas, late-night talk shows, and in Target, automobile and fast-food television spots.

More power to them. I don't posit that the increasing permeability of the membrane between indie and mainstream is an insidious development; instead, it should be acknowledged in the interest of foiling nonsensical Puritanism. While truly market-exempt, homegrown music exists (let's call it indie with a lowercase "i"), it's undeniable that capital-I Indie Music (i.e. music aimed at the charts that is "indie" only in its external mien) is here. Indie Music is big business, and it's absurd to act like it's still being run out of someone's garage. The central paradox is that Indie Bands are marketed as personal choices that express the consumer's highly specific personality and separation from the herd by grouping them within, natch, one large and faceless herd-- at least Avril Lavigne makes no bones about being for the masses.

Enter The Comas, who tread this imbricate middle ground between indie and mainstream. Teen dramas on the WB have become a fertile market for Indie Music song placement. Comas singer Andy Herod has done Death Cab and The Shins one better by dating Dawson's Creek's Michelle Williams for a couple years, then writing an album about the relationship and its demise. Conductor was at least partially banked by Warner Bros., who released it overseas before selling the rights for the American release to Yep Roc. Not to mention that the music itself-- alternately dreamy and rocking, aching and pissed indie (make that "Indie") pop-- has both the sort of accessible, mainstream appeal and the aura of timeliness that comes from the confluence of elusive cultural currents, the stuff of which crossover hits are made.

But the market is fickle, and what will break big seems almost arbitrary. Regardless of whether or not The Comas push through, Conductor is an accomplished pop/rock album that, while being more sonically akin to The Stills, shares Death Cab's sense of accessibility and emotional transparency. The album opens with "The Science of Your Mind", an ominous minor-key guitar drone bolstering a mobile lead melody and Herod's sleek, hooky vocals: "Help me make this go away/ Like you burned up all my faith." Like all the superbly sequenced and tonally contiguous songs on Conductor, it conveys a sense of starry darkness and alien landscapes inspired-- if one believes press release mythology-- by Herod's repeated viewing of the film Dark City. "Moonrainbow" is an acoustic-sounding ballad that moves through subtle orchestral pop movements and breathy falsettos. And "Tonight on the WB" represents the more woozy, fuzz-rock side of The Comas, blurring the lines between Williams' role in Herod's life and her role in sundry dramatic entertainment: "We love it when you fall apart/ You turn it into higher art."

The album is accompanied by a DVD, Conductor: The Movie, which was written and directed by filmmaker/animator Brent Bonacorso. It features videos for each song that seamlessly blend into a unified aesthetic statement, an elliptical science-fiction love story with appearances by Williams and Herod that is visually informed by a blend of live footage and polished animation (robots and weird floating schematics galore), the technologically haywire topology of the aforementioned Dark City, and a rather cool visual effect of light pouring off objects in bubbles. Like Conductor the album, the film pulls no punches in its quest for a highly refined effect: It is resolutely hi-fi, looks unabashedly expensive, outsourced and D.I.W.C.A. (Do It With Corporate Assistance) and is-- paired with the songs-- the product of a distinct and ambitious intent to be a veritable event, to distinguish itself from the throng of decent yet interchangeable indie rock releases.