Where did all the good rock music go? Everything today is angry, angst-filled yelling over a heavy bass and screaming guitars. It's impossible to tell one band from the next. They could all join forces and become Three Doors Down from Creed there was a Puddle of Mudd that became Tantric due to some Saliva from Nickelback. It would save everyone time, money and confusion.

Thankfully, Cracker remains as good as ever. Their potent and unique mix of modern rock and Americana roots is at its best on "Forever," the band's fifth studio album. It hit stores in January and Cracker hits Milwaukee on Sun., March 17 at the Miramar Theatre.

Singer/guitarist David Lowery was kind enough to chat with OMC about the group, rock music, touring, Cracker's Milwaukee connection and more.

OMC: Why did you decide to call the album "Forever?" What's the story behind that?

DL: I wish there were a good reason, but there really isn't. The art director was working on the artwork, and we had a photo where we were doing a sort of Dorothea Lang thing. The art director was asking us for a title and we weren't coming up with anything, so she just starting picking titles of songs and sending them as sort of mock-ups. And the whole point is, on the song "Forever," forever isn't really a good forever. It's like a drunkard's forever. It's a drunken promise of forever, so it's very unreliable. Plus, the people really don't look happy in that photo. Somehow it just worked.

OMC: I'm not sure if this is the right word, but the album sounds very carefree. I can hear how much fun you guys are having. Is that an accurate description, and has recording always been that way?

DL: Certainly this is more carefree than some of the other records we've done. In a way, it's similar to another record we did called "Golden Age." It's very much a studio record and the recording process is a very important part of the sound. It's very dense and there's a lot of instruments and studio manipulation on both records. But this record was all accidental where as "Golden Age" was all methodically planned out. We had a string section. This record has some of the same quirks and sound changes, but it's all accidental. We did it all in nine months. We would go in and play four and five songs, and stay in the studio for about a week playing them in different ways. Then I'd go in as the producer and start editing and chopping things up. Sometimes they were completely different takes with completely different instruments. We just started picking out the stuff that we liked. I'm not sure how carefree it could have been since we did it over a period of nine months. It wasn't casual.

OMC: Over the years, how has the music changed and stayed the same? How has it progressed over time?

DL: To us, the idea of what current music is covers a period from now to about 30 years ago. It's been almost four years since we made a studio record. Things have changed in that time. The big electronica rock-is-dead scare has come and gone again. The drum machine seems to have found its place in rock music without overwhelming it. We've incorporated little bits of technology into what we're doing now. But it's not a big part of our sound. And we've never been the most modern band. We're usually like three or four years back of everybody else. There are some little bits of 80s and 90s stuff in this record that wasn't in the last one. But otherwise I think it's a similar approach.

OMC: Is intelligent rock an oxymoron these days? How would you define it?

DL: I think it is an oxymoron. When you have songs where the chorus is "Shut up when I'm talking to you!" and "It's my way or the highway," it's like rock doesn’t seem very smart right now. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We don't think rock was always this way and we're not trying to do intellectual rock. We're not trying to do stuff like Stephen Malkmus did with Pavement and pull stuff from "Finnegan's Wake" and other books and make real intellectual kind of rock. But compared to what the status quo is right now, I think people think that rock has to be dumb and monosyllabic. And it doesn't have to be. It's the notion that you have to pander to the masses. We don't care about the masses and we never have. To become popular, I don't think you have to do that. I don't think people want to be pandered to.

OMC: Is there an effort on your part to please longtime fans and recruit new ones, or do you not worry about that?

DL: I've always felt that you need to be selfish and self-indulgent first, and please yourself first. That's why we don't use a set list. We do a show according to what our mood is that night. And eventually you build a bond with the audience as the show goes on and they start influencing what songs you pick. But I think you have to start with yourself. I wouldn't want to go and see a band that wasn't enjoying themselves or playing the kind of music that they wanted to. I've seen bands play their popular song that doesn't sound like any of their other songs and look like they wanted to kill themselves. I would never want to be in that position. We don't make an active effort to please our fans. I think they respect us because we don't pander to them. As far as a broader audience, I don't think what we do is weird or unintelligible for a mainstream audience. That's more an issue with how we've been marketed.