David Lowery explains that when Camper Van Beethoven first reunited a couple years ago the members proceeded with extreme caution.
"On our first reunion shows, we just want to check it out and see if we were doing this '80s nostalgia thing, because we really didn't want to do that," says Lowery. "It was nice to play the songs, because it felt like a lot of the songs had a weird timeliness: you have a Bush in office again, you have a veering to the right, you have a war going on. It's very similar."
Perhaps that is why "Take the Skinheads Bowling," off the band's first disc, Telephone Free Landslide Victory, wound up being featured in Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine. But according to Lowry, even the renewed relevance of the old songs was not enough to ward off the group's fear of catering to nostalgia.
"We decided if we got back together, we'd have to write a record. We started to work on it about two years ago," he says.
The end result, New Roman Times, is due out in October and the advance word is that the disc is as good as any of the band's previous efforts. Despite being a concept album featuring a disabled vet who becomes a suicide bomber, Lowery points out that the Campers' surreal instincts remain firm.
"It's got space aliens and genetically modified plants that produce weird drugs," explains Lowery. "In this reality, the Beatles were sort of an obscure band and Ringo wasn't the drummer. It's never explained in the record. It's in our deep background. It's a very loose narrative. It's closer to what Zappa would do than what the Who would do, more 200 Motels [Frank Zappa's 1971 album]."
Lowery notes that by choosing to make a concept disc, Camper is paying tribute—perhaps a bit ... well ... camp-ily—to classic rock.
"Our legacy was out of the Southern California punk rock, even though we didn't really sound punk rock. That's where we started out," he says. "We put out a cassette that was reviewed by Maximum Rock 'n' Roll [magazine]. The punk rockers got our stuff first and that is where we came from. But we weren't aspiring to be the greatest punk band in the world. We wanted to be like the Clash, who had managed to cross over and just be accepted as a rock band. We wanted make records in the classic rock tradition. We didn't really expect to get there. It was just what we sort of moved toward."
With New Roman Times and a modest spot opening for Ben Kweller, it is clear that rather than a reunion victory lap, Camper Van Beethoven is intent on simply getting back to work.
"Now we can tour and do all those fun things you do before a record comes out," says Lowery, "play little conventions, do interviews, get your promo photos taken."