Marjorie Fair: Our beautiful maladies

Evan Slamka of the LA band Marjorie Fair tells James McNair how life's more bruising moments are behind the melancholy songs of their album Self Help Serenade

On the sun-scorched roof of a decrepit eight-storey building in downtown Los Angeles, Evan Slamka is distinguishing between the haves and have-nots. "Over there," he says, pointing to a Wells Fargo building, "is a banking quarter where billions of dollars are transacted every day. And this here," he indicates a scuzzy-looking structure, "is the Weingart Mission. When we moved here, it was a little scary to see people get mugged with a baseball bat, or shoot up heroin in the last vein of their body that's useable. Now, though, we've become used to it."

On the sun-scorched roof of a decrepit eight-storey building in downtown Los Angeles, Evan Slamka is distinguishing between the haves and have-nots. "Over there," he says, pointing to a Wells Fargo building, "is a banking quarter where billions of dollars are transacted every day. And this here," he indicates a scuzzy-looking structure, "is the Weingart Mission. When we moved here, it was a little scary to see people get mugged with a baseball bat, or shoot up heroin in the last vein of their body that's useable. Now, though, we've become used to it."

By "we" Slamka means Marjorie Fair, the alt.rock outfit that he fronts and fuels. It's Slamka who writes the group's songs, and Slamka alone who is signed to Capitol records. Given that his group is named after a fetching variety of white-and-fuchsia rose, it's ironic to find that he and his bandmates lead a communal, "Monkees-hit-skid-row"-like existence in LA's ugliest neighbourhood. Ironic, too, that while Marjorie Fair's mesmerising debut, Self Help Serenade, has been lauded across in the UK, it has yet to be released in the group's American homeland.

That's doubly puzzling, moreover, when you consider that Slamka signed his record deal right here in Los Angeles: two years ago, Capitol was seduced by the bruised beauty of his Brian-Wilson-meets-My-Bloody-Valentine songs when Marjorie Fair aired them at a party that took place just beneath where my host and I are sitting. "At the time, it was like Fort Apache around here," he recalls, "and all these fancy record company cars were parked up outside our building.We figured that if we could tempt the bigwigs into the eye of the hurricane, it would be a good way of gauging genuine interest."

Slamka is wearing a moth-eaten Bee Gees T-shirt that he made himself some years back. More intriguing are his tattoos: on his left forearm he has a woodcut of Pythagoras - it seems Slamka is much impressed by the philosopher's writings - and on his right, there is a design associated with the Third House of the Tarot (it's representative of communication and self- expression), which chimes with Slamka's need to communicate through the "safe haven" of music.

Unpacking this theme, we talk about the dark and confessional nature of his song writing, and agree that there is a lot to be said for the line in Tom Waits's "Come on up to the House" that runs: "Come down off the cross/ We can use the wood." But Slamka won't apologise for his love of melancholy, and rightly points out that his band's fabulous new single "Waves", written for a close friend suffering from depression, is actually rather uplifting.

The lapsed-Catholic son of a house painter-turned-paint salesman and a piano-playing housewife, Slamka, 33, is of Slovak and Russian descent. He grew up in Maywood, New Jersey, but relocated to LA in November 2000. When he was a youngster, the record collections of his elder sisters, also both musicians, engendered a liking for The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Elvis. He was also a Kiss fan, and once had a crush on Brooklyn-born rock chick, Pat Benatar.

On Self Help Serenade, Slamka's love of the Fab Four - and the most confessional Beatle, John Lennon, in particular - is evident on "Stare", but on shimmering opener "Don't Believe", his rich lead vocal has something of The Eagles' Don Henley about it. What really shakes things up elsewhere on the album, though, is the audible influence of indie "slo-core" acts such as Low and My Bloody Valentine, with Slamka often hatching wonderfully impressionistic guitar solos.

Talk to Slamka for any length of time and you soon detect something of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye about him, something concerned and humanitarian. "Why am I like that?" he asks. "I'm not sure. It could be the case that I've had experiences when I was a child, when I've seen the line between right and wrong being crossed." The singer goes on to talk of a childhood friend, who, aged 7, regularly had "the shit beaten out of him" by his parents. "Stuff like that got under my skin then and it continues to do so."

This much is apparent on Marjorie Fair songs such as "Halfway House". "That's a halfway house right there," says Slamka, gesturing back at the Weingart Mission building. "Some of my lyrics for that song are stream of conscious-ness, but others are based on real life. As an artist it's good to feel these things, of course, but sometimes I wish I wasn't so sensitive to them. What are you gonna do, though? I don't think I could write a decent song about my stock portfolio going through the roof."

Instead, he writes affecting, slow-burning songs that are often composite reflections upon more emotive personal experiences; songs, in short, like Self Help Serenade's special closer, "My Sun's Setting Over Her Magic."

What inspires Slamka outside of music?

"People overcoming barriers or dealing with their struggle in a dignified way. You see strangers every day that can't seem to find their niche, and you feel for them." He suddenly brightens: "Then again, who knows what they're feeling? Maybe they're just enjoying a decaf while you and I try to unravel the meaning of existence."

'Self Help Serenade' and the single 'Waves' are out now on EMI