Modern Skirts ready to break down barriers

To hear Jay Gulley and JoJo Glidewell tell it, Modern Skirts is in a state of change. But what the band is transitioning to hasn't been nailed down yet.

"We're in this transitional period, which is both scary and exciting," Glidewell says. "We could run into a wall, or the next thing we do could be awesome. There's no precedent. ... We don't really know where we're transitioning, but we're definitely pushing hard. We want to break down some barriers."

With a pair of critically acclaimed albums - 2005's "Catalogue of Generous Men" and 2008's "All of Us in Our Night" - the quartet opted to take an out-of-the-box approach to its third song collection, which was recorded last year in New Orleans and mixed earlier this month at Athens' Chase Park Transduction Studios.

Modern Skirts - Gulley (guitar, vocals), Glidewell (piano, guitar, vocals), Phillip Brantley (guitar, bass, vocals) and John Swint (drums) - appears not to break, but to bend greatly, the mold it has developed with its ear-friendly, piano-based tunes that have drawn favorable comparisons to The Beatles, The Kinks, The Beach Boys and other pop craftsmen.

"This is probably going to be the black sheep of our records," Glidewell says. "It's either going to blow your mind or you're going to hate it. It's going to challenge people, and I can't wait to see how it plays out."

"All of Us" was, in effect, created by committee, with Modern Skirts producing six songs, Cracker's David Lowery producing five and R.E.M.'s Mike Mills behind the console for one tune. While Glidewell opines that a number of the songs on the second album are among "the best things we've ever recorded," he said he was more than ready to make big changes for album No. 3.

"The only problem with our second album was that it seemed to me to be a reaction to our first album," he says. "We threw ourselves into it without a finished product in mind. We're fortunate that the people we worked with help shape it.

"We've always been a very safe band. When our second album came out, we played that night, and the next day, I just didn't know if I wanted to be in the band anymore. It was like we'd hit a wall. And I knew if we had another record like that, it

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