By Gail Worley

Around the time Bush were telling us everything was Zen, Sponge attacked the alternative music scene with a vengeance and gave that band of pretty boys a run for the big bucks. "Plowed," a scathing anthem that raged against "A world of human wreckage," propelled sales of their debut, Rotting Pinata, to the platinum level. Their 1996 follow-up, Wax Ecstatic, was an equally dark outing; delivering not-one-but two songs about drag queens (the remnants of an intended concept album), the spiritual channeling of an assassinated Russian princess ("I am Anastasia") and a thinly-veiled lullaby to a corpse ("Velveteen"). Three Years ago Sponge had the hit singles, the national tour, the de rigueur support gig for Kiss. Then they disappeared from the rock and roll radar completely. Many fans and critics thought Sponge was over, but on April 13, these Detroit rockers came back from the land of "Where Are They Now" with New Pop Sunday, a stunning collection of finely crafted songs, full of urgency and headlong passion, that represent their most commercially viable work to date.

"This is our second crack at this record," says Sponge vocalist, Vinnie Dombrowski, 36, speaking from his home in Detroit (It's "Cheap rent so I can keep making music"). New Pop Sunday, he continues, was first completed over a year ago. "We went to the big city to work in a big studio. It was the first time we had done that kind of thing. We delivered the record and the label wasn't too jazzed about what they got." Dombrowski says the band's then label, Columbia "didn't quite get" the record and questioned how they were going to successfully market it. They wondered "Is it alternative or what?"

At that point, Sponge parted ways with the label, choosing to put the record out themselves. Tapes were remixed, some new songs recorded and others dropped. It took a year before Sponge signed a deal with Beyond records. The band also found new management On New Pop Sunday, as on their previous records, Dombrowski's lyrics reveal a mind filled with the stuff of troubled sleep: Broken souls who dwell on the fringe of society, disposable lovers, dead-end existence and a sense of loss from which there is little rest. His band brings these hyper-functional characters to life against an aural canvas awash with layered guitars and crisp musical arrangements. New Pop Sunday sounds like Sponge never went away, and Vinnie Dombrowski was eager to talk about their long hard climb out of limbo.

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I think a lot of people thought Sponge had broken up...have you been playing out at all to keep yourselves in the minds of your fans?

No, that's just it, because we're not out there, [fans] can go "well, they're not out here, we don't hear much from them, maybe they're over." It's such a struggle to make changes at the label and to begin focusing in again on the music. We're at the point now where we're ready to go out on the road again.

Dealing with the kind of rejection you got from your former label, when you had to go back in and rework these songs, did that have any kind of emotional impact on you and on how the album ultimately turned out?

Well, you sit in that limbo for a month or a year or whatever, and you really have to get back in touch with why you're doing what you do. When you're out gigging and playing in clubs, that's instant gratification. But when you don't have that support -- especially when the label that you're with decides [they don't like what you've done] -- you've got to sit down and figure out what you really value and, in time, go "Why am I really doing all of this? Why am I going through this?" In some ways, you almost feel like you've been abandoned. When you examine that closely, you realize you're doing it because you just love doing it. When you get a grip back on that, then you can see the big picture and get it all together. And, yeah, it's a real drag. But I think a lot of bands disappear because they finally go "I've had it." I've gotten to that point; where it's been one sock to the chops after another. But this is what I really want to do, and that's the big picture. That's what makes the long, hard climb worth it.

I think your music has always been inherently dark, but dark in a way that a lot of people would miss if they weren't paying close attention, because it's easy to get hooked on all these layered guitars and pop melodies. New Pop Sunday is more consistently pop-sounding, but there are still all the dense guitars and cryptic lyrics. It's missing the real dirges though...there are no "Pennywheels" on this record.

Well, you know what, with this record we've actually gone and visited that place again, but not to the extent, as you say, of a "Pennywheels." When I look at songs on this record, I look at "Lucky" or "Polyanna," you know those tunes basically are pretty dark but the pay off is in the chorus, where there's a glimmer of optimism. There was almost a conscious effort to go back, and I look at the second record and I wanted to make an effort not to wallow, for lack of a better word. The first record, people got that, they really got that. The second record I [thought], you know what, I want to try and do something a little bit different lyrically, and that's where a song like "Got to be a Bore" came from. That was real important...it really pinpointed where we lyrically were going with the whole record. This record talks about those things, lost love....

I wanted to ask you about "I Am Anastasia" because it is my favorite song. I think it's so cool how you brought Richard Butler in to sing on that song and I also wondered how you were inspired to focus the lyrics on the intention of channeling the spirit of a dead girl?

Well, I sat down and basically how that [song] came about was exactly how [the lyrics say]. I was looking through this book, called Incredible Facts or something like that, or Amazing Stories, and I literally saw that line "I am Anastasia." Disney calls it "Ana-stay-sia," I don't know what that's about...anything I've ever heard about her it was pronounced "Ana-stah sia," but at any rate, at that point I thought it was such a deep story. When I finally learned about what had happened to her - and actually the big question was whether or not she was still alive...

Yeah, whether that woman Anna Anderson was really Anastasia...

Right, right. And at that point I just thought that that was such an incredible experience and story, wow, that's just awesome. To me that song just happened right away after that, knocking out the lyrics for it was easy.

That song blows my mind.

Well, it's cool when people actually read the lyrics.

Yeah it's easy to miss the depth of the lyrics because the music is so catchy.

(Laughs).

I read this statement in one of your older interviews: "The band's goal is to blend the drama of Aerosmith-style stadium rock with the purity of classic rock and the rebelliousness of alternative music" That's pretty ambitious... do you think you've achieved that goal?

Everybody talks about stadium rock and things are so far fragmented from stadium rock. And 'Alternative music,' people talk about that all the time. Really, the bands that were the alternative bands were like the Pumpkins and Soundgarden. I don't know if alternative really even means anything anymore. I look back at something like that [statement]... if we were a stadium rock band...does a stadium rock band even exist?

Maybe the Rolling Stones.

Right, The Social Security Tour. Naw, we haven't gotten there. But maybe if we make the right concept record we can become a stadium band (laughs).

You said in another interview that you think rock and roll is perceived as being unfashionable. What exactly did you mean by that?

You know what? I look at bands like Buck Cherry and Honkey Toast and suddenly there's this real serious garage rock and roll element. You know, the guy in Buck Cherry's talking about cocaine and people are like "Rock and Roll" you know? I think that, at the time I [made that statement], people thought that if you weren't doing a gig, staring at your shoes and bumming out [you weren't cool]. At that time, rock and roll didn't exist. Now all of a sudden it seems to be coming back into fashion.

I always loved the "show" aspect of a rock show. The costume changes and lights and explosions to compliment the music.

Someone who really brought that whole rock show thing back to life is [Marilyn] Manson. He stepped into a void and brought the visual aspect of rock to a whole new audience, to a whole new level. He brought a stadium rock show to smaller venues. It's been a long time coming.

The song on New Pop Sunday, "All American World," does that reflect some kind of cynicism acquired from being on the road or is it more indirect than that?

It's along the lines of "Pennywheels," that whole perception of [if you], "work hard and you pursue what you really believe in and things will work out." But sometimes you fall flat on your ass, no matter how hard you try. The thing is, how hard it is to try to get out there and do it, then you come up against disillusionment with your record label (laughs). It's definitely influenced by our experiences in the record business, more than anything.

Isn't it required that every band at some point write a song about disillusionment with the record industry?

Yeah, but overall though it's like the record business is just part of the world. Just getting signed means nothing. Once you make the record there's so much involved in the process. With [Rotting Pinata] we had to consider the state of radio, the state of the label, the state of our management at the time, things just worked out. The timing just couldn't have been better. And we had a great window to work it in.

There seems to be a lot of aspects of destructive or dysfunctional relationships that go on in these songs, yet you don't seem like a terribly fucked up person.

(Laughs) The thing about it is, with any of us, you're born, you learn how to walk and talk and what do you do for the rest of your life? You try to correct all the dysfunction that you learned early in your life. That's my goal, to try to unravel all of that dysfunction. What purpose do I have, other than to try to be a little healthier and a little happier? [I look at] Where I was and what I was working with, and where I am at now is much better. All of those emotions that are handed down from my folks and my parent's parents, I don't want to pass that down to my kids -- and I already have. I don't even know it. You reap what you sow, and it's that way for everyone; we all have to deal with it, and that's what I'm trying to do. Maybe it makes the music seem self-indulgent, I don't know.

The thing about it is, I recall the state of mind I was in when we made the first record and I didn't think about it until a couple of years later. At that point I looked at it and when I speak about [our music being] self-indulgent I am thinking about, to some extent, that record. But I don't mean to be critical of that record. It was what it was.

I understand you have a teenage son and I wondered if it's difficult to be a parent of a teenager and a rock star at the same time.

(Laughs), Yeah, I suppose. Being away from home is the problem. It's hard enough doing everything you need to do when you're there twenty-four and-seven. When you're away from home, it doesn't disconnect you from the fact that you still have to deal with all their stuff. It makes it difficult, but I've been doing this for a long time. I've been playing in bands and going on the road probably twelve years, so it's par for the course. [Parenthood] is a big pill to swallow and it's the toughest job anyone will ever do. It makes this music stuff like a piece of cake (laughs), it's a walk in the park.

The Girl on the cover art for New Pop Sunday looks a lot like a Ralph Bakshi drawing, you know, he did Fritz The Cat...

Oh yeah, right on.

Did you have a hand in conceiving that?

We were thinking of using a photograph of a girl in that whole get-up, but it seemed kind of unlikely that we would find a girl who looked like that...

Ya think?

I don't know. That's why I just told (the artist) what I was thinking about and he sketched it out in seconds flat and it looked great. But now it's like... maybe that girl is out there somewhere.

In LA maybe...

Maybe we could do a "Search for The New Pop Sunday Girl." Who knows, she

could turn out to be RuPaul, I don't know.

Well, I think the drawing is very, uh, "eye catching."

Yeah, yeah. (Laughs). My son likes it.

For More Sponge:

An Interview with Joey Mazzola in Hip Online

The Official Sponge Website