There's a quote from the Washington Post on Camera's release party poster that calls the band's sound "infectious mod-pop in the style of the early Kinks and Who with lots of vocal harmonies, bouncy keyboard lines and sharp, slashy guitars."

   

Camera

With: Black Tie Revue and Shade.
Where: 31st Street Pub, Strip.
When: 10 p.m. Saturday.
Admission: $5; 412-391-8334.   

An unqualified rave, to be sure.

But there's a word the writer used that Joe Dello Stritto, Camera's bassist, has been fighting to suppress for years.

"I just don't think we're a mod band," he's fond of insisting.

With a sigh, Dello Stritto admits it's something of a losing battle.

"As much as I try to say we're not, somebody in a review somewhere ends up using that word," he says. "I told a friend the other day I always liked what Ringo said when they asked him if he was a mod or a rocker. He said, 'I'm a mocker.' In Pittsburgh, even Philly when we're out there, the mod scene, if there is one, is really small and underground. It's not that I don't like it. I do. I like a lot of the bands in that genre. But to me there hasn't been a band in America that has broken that you can say, 'Yeah, that's a mod band.' And I just don't want to be clumped in with that."

He will admit that Camera has played at least a minor role in that description through the years, between all those checkers and stripes and playing mod events and frontman Shane Sahene often looking as though he'd just stepped off the cover of a magazine doing a feature on mod in 1965. And when the members hosted "Where the Action Is," screening the short film "American Mods" and bringing in the mod band that stars in the film, their sponsors included both Vespa and Mini Cooper.

"It's not that we dug our own grave," Dello Stritto admits. "But we kind of did it to ourselves a little bit."

As to how he'd rather people think of Camera, Dello Stritto, an admitted Anglophile, says, "I just say we're a rock 'n' roll band. We lean towards more of the poppy side. It's very dancey and catchy. Not hard rock or anything. So I guess I can see why people would throw the word mod at us, especially when they see Shane."

He's right about it being catchy. Leading up to "This Is Camera" with a string of three EPs between July 2003 and June 2004, Camera's pop sensibilities have never been in question, an infectious brand of effervescent pop recalling the quirkier side of the British Invasion, the danceable side of The Jam and the young Damon Albarn-esque side of the Blur-Oasis War. And "This Is Camera" only takes it up a notch, recorded in Detroit with producer Jim Diamond, known for working with acts like the White Stripes and Mooney Suzuki, neither of which sounds anything like Camera. What Detroit there is on this record, shining through with style and killer hooks on "She She She," is strictly Motown.

As Sahene, who self-produced the three EPs, explains his decision to work with Diamond, "I felt that he had everything we needed. I have a tendency to want to overproduce something, to work it into the ground to where you kill it. But the way he works is, he doesn't waste time. He's very no-nonsense. And I love his recordings. I'm not even a fan of the White Stripes or Mooney Suzuki. But The High Strung records are amazing. I think he's been labeled a little bit, too. But he just really loves music. And the way he works is so much ... almost antiquated, and I think that's what we needed."

So they headed for Detroit, but only after talking Dello Stritto into it by playing to his well-known love of a certain theatrical heavy metal icon.

"We kept telling him Jim was related to King Diamond," Sahene reports, with a laugh. "And I think that's what made him finally go for it."

Diamond recorded the album's 10 songs in a day and half, spent six hours mixing and three hours mastering.

"That's how quickly we ran through it," says Sahene. "And it's strictly because he's such a workhorse. There's no automation. It doesn't go to the computer. It's just going to tape. And I felt like we needed that sort of pressure."

In the end, he loves what Diamond did.

And Diamond likes it, too.

"The biggest compliment we had when the record was done," says Sahene, "is he called a week later. It was late at night, and I think he maybe had a couple drinks or something, but he was just like, 'This record is great. I really love it. You don't understand. I don't listen to music anymore. But I'm listening to your record for pleasure right now, and I can't tell you what a statement that is coming from me.' That in itself epitomizes to me the reason why he was the one to work with. 'Cause he gets it."

The long time off between the third EP and "This Is Camera" coincided, not coincidentally, with a steady stream of lineup changes. The current edition of Camera -- Sahene, Dello Stritto, guitarist Cory Allen (who co-wrote three songs on the album with primary writer Sahene), drummer Justin Chechile and keyboard player Nate the Skate -- has been in place since last September, just in time to make the record.

"I had people tell me that they heard that we broke up," Sahene recalls. "When you lose a band member in a city with no population, it's hard to replace somebody right away. We've just been really lucky. I feel luckier than I've ever been to have been fortunate enough to meet the guys I have now. We just sort of lined up in a way I'd have never imagined."

As to what inspired all those lineup changes, Sahene says, "The problem that seems to come up is, I don't think people in bands are always used to the idea that you're always going to be overextended. We're always in over our heads, always trying to do more than we can afford to do and doing more than we should try to do. We're just ambitious. But being ambitious, even if you fall short, there's a lot of good experiences within it. At this point, I sometimes love the ride in the van as much as any part of the trip. I mean, the show is just one part of the whole reason I love music more than I ever have."

He certainly loves it more now than he did when he fronted lowsunday, a band that liked to call its music "dark wave."

Going from that sound to this sound, he says, "was just a shift in the way I wanted to live and the way I wanted to feel. Before we would play, I would feel good and when we were done, I'd feel worse."

The idea with Camera, he says, was to move away from "all these guys in bands who think they're solving people's problems with their emotions and complaining. I felt like I just want to live in grace and be happy. I want to celebrate and have fun. I want people to smile, even if we're stupid in the process. Like the cover of our record, five grown men in a bathtub. I just want people to feel good. More than mod or any of those other descriptions, it's just good times, almost a good times revival in my own life."

And just to clarify, he does not mean the television show "Good Times," although when asked, he laughs and says, "No, not the TV show. But it's still dyn-o-mite."

First Published: March 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.