What's unique about Superdrag's major label debut, "Regretfully Yours", is the enthusiastic, against-the-grain power you can hear from the very first brigade of guitars they unleash on the 13 song disc. With a shameless sense of melody, and a '60s pop song reverence they wear unabashedly on their back pockets, this Knoxville Tennessee quartet can make a pretty good living at melding white hot noise with their own brand of manic rock. Boston producer Tim O' Heir has taken their soon-to-be trademark sheets of ebbing and flowing guitar sound and nailed it perfectly to drummer Don Coffey Jr.'s crisp backbeat.

Perhaps the best example of this is the enigmatic rocker "Sucked Out."' A bemused John Davis . who sings and writes all of Superdrag's songs, spits through the speakers in a Lennonesque wail worthy of the song's perennial question. "Who sucked out the feeling?" he asks in the catchy chorus, with the band breaking their pop stride only at the song's finale, stepping up in a blissful crescendo of guitars. But there's more here than just un-hinged rock. Davis poses a question worth asking in today's pop wars, but by the time the group fires up their closing reprise, the question almost becomes rhetorical. Superdrag, is feeling fine, thank you very much.

They've had a lot of practice to get it right. The pop foursome, John Davis, (guitars, vocals) Tom Pappas, (bass) Brandon Fisher, (guitar) and Don Coffey Jr., (drums) spent a lot of time floating in and out of each other's bands before cementing their present lineup. They first joined forces in a primal rock band fronted by Pappas called The Used. Eventually John (who was playing drums) relinquished the duties to Don and began to concentrate on songwriting. After a few months of basement rehearsals and a handful of criers as a trio, the band found the configuration that worked best and took the name Superdrag.

According to John, however, it took the initial version of "Whitey's Theme," (which would appear in a subsequent version on R-Y,) to bring the chemistry of the group to the surface. "We did a demo in my bedroom," he recalls. "It just seemed to click. At the time that really seemed to define our sound to a lot of people," The fully realized studio version of the rocker kicks off side two of Regretfully Yours. The song starts up with a teasing wind-up of percolating guitars, buzzing underneath John's stirring vocal in its own sing-song loop of noise. Another version of this Superdrag classic was also used as the opening cut on the band's first six song demo, Stereo 60 Sound, recorded by Knoxville producer and SD friend Nick Raskulinecz. Five of the cuts were ultimately released by San Francisco based label Darla Records. Their final Darla release was last year's 7 song compilation, "The Fabulous 8 Track Sound Of Superdrag" culled from another demo session with Raskulinecz. Raved CMJ: "Just when indie rock was beginning to lose its beguiling charm, Superdrag has arrived at a near perfect amalgam of fuzzy guitars, sincere scruffy vocals, and tightly wound melodies."

All this from Knoxville Tennessee, you say? As good a place as any for a scrawny kid to go diving in search of rock pearls. "I was really young when I got into records," says Davis. "I went through all the musical changes like most kids," He ticks off each epoch and their possible effect on the Superdrag sound, though he admits to always coming back to The Beatles. The group has an easy camaraderie with each other that buoys their "this isn't a bad job" attitude about the possibility of being pop stars, They strongly believe in their own musical evolution, and are confident it will sustain them beyond the perfunctory one or two album cycle. Brandon Fisher sums their philosophy up like this: "I remember one reviewer referred to us as pop benders," he says laughing. "Believe me, we've been on a few benders, pop and otherwise," He affirms their one mission has been only to "rock." He cites "Cynicality," as one of his favorite examples of that on the LP.

The band credits producer Tim O'Heir (Belly, Sebadoh, Come) with getting the most out of them on Regretfully Yours. Fisher says O'Heir really worked the group to get the gritty performance you hear on "Sucked Out" and others. "Most of the sessions were sixteen hour days," he says. Davis also gives high praise to Tim's overall approach to record making. The secret to "Sucked Out?" "He put me in a comer and just told me to attack the fucking song," he laughs.