At the Drive-In members move on to better things

If you arrived early at Weezer's show last month at the Verizon Wireless Music Center, the opening band you saw was Sparta. Sparta has unusually good credentials, featuring three former members of At the Drive-In. Jim Ward, Paul Hinojos and Tony Hajjar might as well be known as The Guys in At the Drive-In Who Didn't Have Afros. And unlike Samson, perhaps they have gained strength without all that hair. \nAt the Drive-In combined bristling postpunk musical energy with sodden, pseudo-intellectual lyrics. Sparta, on the other hand, is only semi-pseudo-intellectual, and the band has worked in more flavorful arrangements that allow for keyboards and cello. While nobody would mistake either band for having a sense of humor, Sparta at least has lyrics you can chew on a little without choking. While At the Drive-In's earnestness and ambition could be overbearing at times -- the band clearly wanted to be some sort of U2-Rage Against the Machine hybrid -- Sparta infuses its songs with humility, wistfulness and some old-fashioned emo optimism. \n"Apathy falls into the ocean / at least we went down fighting," Ward sings in "Air." "Mye" is a Jimmy Eat World tune written with slightly bigger words and a world-weary attitude. "This time I'll get it right / you can't defend it, it's predetermined," the chorus says. "Cut Your Ribbon" is a great song, a blast of energy carried by Ward's fiercely cathartic singing and a matching guitar-playing style. The album grows wearying, though, after about the first four songs or so when the band's pretentious side begins to take over. \nAny band that has songs called "Sans Cosm" and "Echodyne Harmonic" is just trying to impress with its intelligence, not necessarily with its message. The album is produced by Jerry Finn, who apparently entered into a pact with Brendan O'Brien to produce every major-label rock record this year. While Finn excels at making records sound current and radio-friendly, he puts a little too much sonic gloss on what ideally is an emo bloodletting. Maybe by the next album, Sparta will recognize that to gain its own identity, it can find a peaceful middle ground between clichés and words out of William F. Buckley's vocabulary. Sparta has made a tentative first step.