Classic rock redivivus.

Maplewood are revivalists. What they're reviving may most easily be summed up thusly: Is this Freedom Rock? Well, turn it up, man! I have no fucking idea what was actually on that cornball-by-design compilation of 1970s power anthems, but I imagine there were songs about being happily lost in the desert, tunes that sound like Maplewood's 12-string-acoustic guitar rock, with three vocalists harmonizing about someplace like New Mexico.

"I was suddenly gravitating to certain kinds of music I had been writing off as being severely bogus," singer/guitarist Mark Rozzo tells me at O'Connors. "I don't think of it as being a parody or being a joke. I think some people would think that.

"I think it was really like a guilty pleasure thing. If you're driving down the interstate and you're listening to some oldies station, or classic rock, and an America song comes on like 'Ventura Highway,' maybe like 40 percent of the time, you're, like, 'Aw, fuck this.' But then there's another 60 percent of the time where you're like, 'Wow, this song is really perfectly constructed, and it's perfectly recorded, and it's just appealing.'

"In terms of the influences on Maplewood, the stuff we started listening to obsessively and kind of secretly?sort of at the cheese end of the spectrum, there's America and Bread. It's really like a guilty pleasure. But it's perfectly produced, great pop music. You really have to be kind of a dickhead to totally get down on it because there's no point."

Like other fun things that cause you to romanticize the past, Maplewood make you nostalgic for something you may not really have experienced. They don't sound exactly like America or Bread or the Byrds or the Flying Burrito Brothers, but they sound exactly how what you remember those bands sounded like.

"[The music] seems totally irrelevant," Rozzo says. "It's kind of like the branch on the tree that just died. It's like records that are gathering moss in our parents' record collections. I got into this whole totally romanticized but slightly goofy idealization of what the Southern California music scene was all about, say, between 1970 and 1973."

Maybe there's somebody busking in the subway who shares this esthetic, but Maplewood's certainly unlike every other band in town. This is a pretty neat trick, given that they've played with so many of those bands.

Rozzo also fronts Champale, which, at times, has included members of Luna, Nada Surf and Clem Snide. Maplewood's other singers include Koester frontman Steve Koester and Winterville frontman Craig Schoen (who was just on tour with Cub Country and has recorded and played with Radio 4). The band is filled out by drummer Judd Counsell (who played in Punchdrunk with Steve Koester, and now plays in the Hold Steady with Lifter Puller's Craig Finn) and bassist Jude Webre. In addition, Sparklehorse's Alan Weatherhead (who's produced Champale and Koester records) plays pedal steel on some Maplewood songs. Maplewood cofounder Ira Elliot (also in Champale) has been busy touring with Nada Surf, so he's been on hiatus. Got all that?

Rozzo and pals have been playing around with Maplewood in their Park Slope studio since around Christmas, 2001, although they only started performing live a few months ago. They don't have any released material, but their music was just used for a Kris Kristofferson documentary on Bravo. There was label interest as early as last year "to a degree that totally shocked everybody involved in the project," Rozzo says. "It kind of became this bizarro-world kind of thing. It started off as this unserious, no-pressure side project."

"It's nice when people give a shit about what you're doing," Rozzo adds before pointing out that having played with members of Luna (dumped by Elektra), Nada Surf (dumped by Elektra) and Clem Snide (dumped by Sire) helps him not take the attention so seriously. Yes, he wants to release a Maplewood record, but the fact the band even exists outside of his own mind is already pretty rad.

When I ask how Maplewood started, Rozzo tells me he doesn't really know. But two days later, he emails me: Hey Andy?I was wondering?did I give you a Maplewood disc with approximately nine rough mixes on it that had a kind of "fruit-crate-art" cover? I'm just curious because I'm putting together some cd packages right now and it's reminding me that I designed the album cover?down to song titles?before the band even existed. Which, of course, would have been the honest answer to your question about how Maplewood started and a fitting example of the "high concept" nature of the band. Anyway, I thought you might be mildly amused by this anecdote.

Thanks, Mark.

Maplewood plays Tues., April 8, at the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. Church St. & B'way), 212-219-3055.