Sean Croghan

Suppose Portland were to host the International Rock Olympics. No such thing exists--and half the world's (or at least Seattle's) bands wouldn't pass the drug tests anyway--but if one did, we would need a mascot, a distillation of the town's personality into one representative face.

Consider, wise civic leaders, enlisting Sean Croghan.

Croghan would make as fine an icon for the Rose City music scene as anyone. He's been enmeshed in Next Big Thing hype (literally--his visage is the first you see in the Northwest rock-docu Hype) but come out ego-free and content to stay put in Puddletown. He's fronted some of Portland's most notable rock groups--Crackerbash, Jr. High, Hellcows, Moustache--but is the exact opposite of a rock star: balding, humble and eternally rumpled. No glamorous gallivanter, the 36-year-old Croghan's more like some guy you stumble over outside the local pub, mumbling drunk poetry to the indifferent air and singing songs no one else understands.

Typically, on the eve of his new solo release, From Burnt Orange to Midnight Blue, you won't find him blowing his own horn.

"The whole record basically is dedicated to Portland," he says, sipping Powers whiskey in his Northeast living room. "Because I knew from the onset that even though I'm putting out a new record, by myself, I've learned over the years the fact I was in Crackerbash a gazillion years ago, and the fact I was in Jr. High, doesn't mean fucking jack diddley. People forget that shit."

Noting the difference between Burnt Orange and Crackerbash's spastic firestorms or Jr. High's scrappy Costello-esque pop, that amnesia might come in handy. The new album brims with oblique pop confessionals, sometimes scraped raw with fuzzy guitar or warmed by warbling organs, other times stripped down to the naked sound of a single guitar and Croghan's voice straining to hopscotch to the melodies' higher octaves. ("Sometimes I really like the way it sounds when you're straining for a high note and you can't hit it, that feel of tension it creates," he says.)

Although he invited half the town's indie scenesters--Luther Russell, Paul Pulvirenti (Jr. High), Mike Heiges (The Owners), Martyn Leaper and Rebecca Cole (The Minders), Dan Eccles and Joe Chiusano (Fernando), and Joanne Bolme and Larry Crane (Jackpot! Studios)--to help record the disc, Burnt Orange is all about Sean. There are no bold pronouncements about Life. Just a view of the city through Croghan's eyes, his personal experiences twisted into wistful and wry lyrics about lost love, lost people and lost time. Yeah, it's a little bit sad. And this being a good town for melancholic thoughts, its lyrical content is fully understandable. But will anyone else get it?

"For a long time my songs have been about specific things, specific events," he admits. "But I always hope they'll move across to a broader audience, where you didn't have to be there, you didn't have to be in that breakup, you didn't have to be in that situation, you didn't have to be angry at this person. I'm really trying to work hard on getting past my direct experiences and make them universal experiences."

One thing the album's absolutely not is like anything his peers are doing. While many slump-shouldered indie youth are quietly drafting mellow, abstract anti-pop heavy on atmosphere, Croghan is busy stitching heart to sleeve and juicing his blue-collar folk tunes with blue-eyed soul vocals.

"I think that kind of music is really great," he says of the current post-rock and instrumental-indie milieu. "But I worry about the passion of it. Are you expressing real, true passion? I think it's really beautiful, but at the same time I'm not getting any sort of real emotional feeling. I'm not being driven to tears, or driven to anger, or driven to sheer joy.... My record's the total antithesis of that. It's just about passion, and it's not about any indie credibility at all. I listen to my record and think, 'God, this is gonna go over like a lead zeppelin with the indie kids.'"

So let's take stock: Well-known and respected longtime scenester releases album stuffed full of emotional songsmithery. And he thinks people won't like it? What's wrong here?

"I've lamented so many times about going to a show and no one wants to dance anymore...everyone's just restrained. That to me is sad. But I think a lot of it is new people in Portland being frightened to express themselves because they might not be accepted for being who they are. Whereas in the past it was like, 'Yeah, I know Sean. He's a fucking geek. But look, he's having a good time.'"

Erm...but Sean, you definitely seem to have mellowed out a bit, too. Burnt Orange ain't exactly a cavalcade of dancefloor hits.

"Yeah, there's times I wish I could be in a band again," he laments, shrugging through an aggressively chugging guitar strum, "and get back to freaking out."

Of course, this is a guy whose last stab at a full-on band, JFK, never got off the ground because the members didn't feel they'd fully ingested their influences--the oft-plundered protopunk grind of the MC5 and Stooges--enough to make them their own. A thousand soulless Iggy clones abound; these guys must be the only ones who'd decline the chance to rock out just because it wouldn't be "emotionally honest." It's a characteristically proud and iconoclastic move for this ex-punk musician who's about to go solo.

"[Burnt Orange] is not like what's going on necessarily in indie music or punk rock music," he says. "It's singer-songwriter stuff. Sometimes it freaks me out: 'God, am I turning into fucking Billy Joel?'"

His solution for avoiding that trap?

"The next record's gonna be nothing but slow jams."

Bring the love.