TRULY

There are those who would call Truly a Seattle supergroup, but you won't hear that phrase uttered by members of the group or staffers at Capitol, which released the trio's label debut, "Fast Stories... from Kid Coma" in June.

"We don't want to fall into the trap of capitalizing on the past efforts of any of this band's members," says Clark Staub, Capitol senior director of alternative marketing. "Some people may be aware of what they've done before, but we're not going out of our way to exploit it."

Those past projects include Soundgarden, with whom bassist Hiro Yamamoto spent several years, and the Screaming Trees, co-founded by Truly drummer Mark Pickerel. The band is fronted by guitarist Robert Roth, who wrote much of the intricate, psychedelically inclined material on "Fast Stories... from Kid Coma" (The title comes from the album's pseudo-conceptual slant: The songs are loosely spun from the viewpoint of a comatose youth who, in his vegetative state, is reliving a past summer of grandeur.)

The album was initially started when Truly was under contract to SubPop (who handle the vinyl format of the album). "SubPop thought we were insane, that we were never going to finish this album, which, looking back on it, seems like a valid point," says Pickerel. "We kept finishing and starting over, and we spent so much money that they just pulled the plug and tried to get someone to buy the tapes."

By the time Capitol imprint Revolution Records stepped in, three years had passed. Thus "Fast Stories... from Kid Coma", which clocks in at well over 70 minutes, is the first Truly release since a SubPop ep back in 1991 - which contained the memorable track "Leslie's Coughing Up Blood", a dark, sinuous version of which crops up on the Capitol release.

"We didn't want to get wrapped up in the idea of getting records out just to have them out," says Pickerel. "We played out, we worked on material, and we kept at it. I think of this as almost a 'best of' covering the last few years."

Capitol's Staub thinks much the same way, insisting that the label isn't pushing a defined single or video strategy. "It's not that kind of record," he says. "I think of it as being similar to the first Jane's Addiction record, in that it doesn't seem to fit a niche right now, but it will create its own niche before long."

To facilitate that occurrence, the label previously shipped a limited-edition 10-inch EP featuring the album tracks "Blue Flame Ford" and "Hurricane Dance", in addition to two new songs. Intended primarily for college radio, the EP was also targeted to mom-and-pop retailers, a business with which Pickerel, who owns Rodeo Records in his hometown of Ellensburg, Wash., is familiar.

"I've always dreamed of doing what I'm doing right now, in terms of both the store and the band," says Pickerel. "There was a long period where I wasn't even sure about the band part, which was true of Hiro too. We both had bad tastes in our mouths from our previous dealings with labels."

Pickerel implies that the bad taste has been washed away by the band's interaction with Capitol, which is taking a low-key and long-term approach to marketing "Fast Stories".

Despite the fact that Revolution Records head Ron Lafitte departed Capitol during May, the record still came out on the Revolution/ Capitol imprint. A&R exec. Matt Aberle is now working with the Truly project.

"We don't think we're going to make a singles band out of Truly, their songs are seven, nine, ten minutes long," says Staub. "We're not going to present an edited version of the band to anyone. We're confident that it's striking enough that we won't have to do that". (This article originally appeared in Billboard)

Truly are:

• Robert Roth (guitar, vocals)
• Hiro Yamamoto (bass)
• Mark Pickerel (drums, vocals)

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