Three Chords & The Truth: Ida Maria & Glasvegas

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SONGWRITER HARLAND HOWARD described country music with the oft-quoted phrase, "Three chords and the truth." The power of pop music flows from a similar formula: using simple songs to address complex emotions.

Norway's Ida Maria or Scotland's Glasvegas are comfortable with a handful of chords and the truth, too. While the melodic and harmonic structures these new artists use are as old as the tools they employ to demonstrate them — guitars, bass, drums, vocals — they can make the familiar feel like the first time.

"This record was an experiment," said Maria about her debut, "Fortress 'Round My Heart" (Mercury Records). "I wanted my first record to have only 10 tracks and three chords — all in major chords. I tried to challenge myself by doing exactly the opposite of what I naturally do, which is more rooted in funk and jazz and blues and stuff like that. I wanted to structure a straightforward punk-pop record, just to introduce myself."

Maria says "hello" like a fireball on drink-fueled ravers such as "Oh My God" ("Find a cure for life"), "Louie" ("I'm always drunk as can be") and "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked" (self-explanatory). But her ballads are just as powerful: "Drive Away My Heart" ("Love will be my grave"), "Keep Me Warm" ("All your cigarettes and [a] cup of coffee keeps me warm") and "Morning Light" ("I've got such a heavy heart") are filled with the raw emotion that marks so many vintage country songs.

"I'm a very open person, and I'm quite used to working around the open wounds on some occasions," Maria laughed. "It's more important for me to be able to be honest with myself and my ideas. ... I have come back to myself a couple of times and been a bit angry with myself about being so open, but at the same time I think it's really worth it. Because the most boring thing I know is to go to a concert where everything is constructed and planned and fake."

Maria's honesty comes through because of her amazing voice, which sounds whiskey-and-smoke sanded by rock 'n' roll but wielded with the same authority and authenticity of a classic jazz singer. At the end of "Stella," for example, she sings, "I'm going to give you the world if you just hold me tonight" in weary, craggy vocals that sound like they're delivered from someone collapsed outside a lover's front door.

But for all the candidness in her lyrics — which seem to revolve around desire, regret and drinking ("I need some whiskey, please," she sings on "Queen of the World") — Maria isn't in danger of becoming the next Amy Winehouse.

"I've had my wild and crazy days already," said Maria, 24. "I'm more interested in the literal part of this business than I was before. I'm definitely enjoying myself more when I'm not drinking all the time. The whole point of the tour is to travel and see new places and meet new people, and if you're drunk or hungover you miss all of that. It's just a waste of time."

Don't tell Glasvegas booze is a waste of time: bassist Paul Donoghue would run out of things to blog about on the band's MySpace page, which involves much hilarity about vomit and passing wind (Gasvegas?).

Like Maria, Glasvegas' heartthrob crooner James Allan writes about broken hearts, but he's not just talking about the lovelorn in his jungle-thick Glaswegian brogue. While "It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry" is about infidelity and guilt, much of the singer-songwriter's tunes on Glasvegas' self-titled debut address social issues, such as "Daddy's Gone." But lead guitarist Rab Allan (James' cousin) said such lyrics aren't strictly biographical: "Absentee fathers are a problem everywhere."

Rab Allan also didn't want to box Glasvegas in as a "Glasgow" band despite the group's name, its foundational similarities to fellow Glaswegians the Jesus and Mary Chain, and that James Allan's lyrics about Scotland's largest city — from youth violence and knife culture ("Flowers & Football Tops"; "Go Square Go!"; "Stabbed") to the decay of families ("Daddy's Gone"; "Geraldine") are so poetically incisive.

But Rab Allan is right: Glasvegas isn't a Scottish band; by Harland Howard's definition, it's a country group.

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; Thu., Mar. 26, 8 p.m., $15; 202-667-4490. (U St.-Cardozo)

» Related: For Glasvegas videos and a review of the band's album, visit Sad Songs Say So Much: Glasvegas, 'Glasvegas' [Express]

Photos courtesy Mercury Records; Columbia Records