Local H All About the Hits may 10 01

Local H frontman Scott Lucas had a very simple philosophy for writing and recording the band's fourth full-length album, "Ten songs, ten hits," he quips, "just like REO Speedwagon did with Hi-Infidelity."

The as-yet-untitled album (due late summer) will be the follow-up to 1998's sadly neglected concept album, Pack Up the Cats. Obvious fans of the classic rock recording ethos -- longtime Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker handled Cats, -- Lucas and new drummer Brian Saint Claire brought Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick) to New York to man the knobs for the new album, which will be mixed in Atlanta next week by Nick DiDia (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots).

And guests abound: Misfits' bassist Jerry Only sings on a track called "Keep Your Girlfriend," Triple Fast Action's Wes Kidd contributed to "Half-Life," and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age sings on "Rock and Roll Professionals," Lucas' condemnation of the deluge of musicians who participate in commercials -- a topic similarly bitched about in Neil Young's acerbic "This Note's for You."

"I think it's pathetic," Lucas says of the folks who've hopped from the radio to Madison Avenue. "People just can't wait to sell out anymore. There are bands who've been on the radio for like two or three months already doing fucking AT&T commercials." While only ten songs will make the album's final cut, Local H recorded upwards of twenty while in the studio. Among those numbers set aside for b-sides, a faithful rendition of Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4," and a cover of the Misfits' "Static Age." Another song, "Payback Is a Mother," will appear on the soundtrack to the forthcoming gangster film This Thing of Ours.

The release will be the group's first since jumping from Island to Palm Pictures, started by former-Island CEO Chris Blackwell. The band made the jump two years ago, after Pack Up the Cats failed to capitalize on the commercial success of 1996's As Good As Dead (which featured the radio hit "Bound for the Floor").