“The English journalists, in particular, try to intellectualize everything,’’ Webb says. “I suppose you can do that with our music, but it’s not what our music is meant for.’’
Getting back to Blink-182, Male Bonding does play something you could classify as pop-punk. Yet the dynamic unspools quite differently in Male Bonding’s music. Instead of conforming to pop-punk’s chipper three-chord melodies and teen-angst lyrics, Male Bonding delivers sharp, abrasive guitars accounting for the “punk’’ element and smoky, melancholic melodies and lyrics forming the “pop.’’
The band’s sophomore album, “Endless Now,’’ comes out on Tuesday, and pushes past “Nothing Hurts’’ with greater variety in the songs. Male Bonding returns to Boston on Wednesday for a show at the Brighton Music Hall with Love Inks and Girlfriends.
Webb says that Male Bonding wanted to work with producer John Agnello on its debut but could not coordinate a schedule with the man who worked on records for such vets as Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth as well as those by Kurt Vile and other fresh voices. But Male Bonding and Agnello coordinated to work together in the winter.
Agnello brought Male Bonding to the Dreamland studio in Woodstock, N.Y. The trio and the producer spent a week at the converted church, and Webb says the lack of distractions allowed the band to work quickly. It helped that they were already prepared.
“Most of the record was written before we got to the studio. The tones and sounds were all chosen in advance, and we just worked on executing it,’’ Webb says. “That’s why John is so great. He’s not a musician, but he thinks like a musician in terms of building the songs.’’
