The Cribs grow with new guitarist

o What: The Cribs, in concert.

o When: 9 p.m. Jan. 29.

o Where: Wonder Ballroom, 128 N.E. Russell St., Portland.

o Cost: $14 through Ticketmaster, 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com.

o Information: 503-284-8686 or http://wonderballroom.com.

Johnny Marr’s résumé may be flashy, but it’s the band’s musical chemistry that shines

Until recently, the Cribs had not exactly commanded music headlines in the United States. While the band had stepped up to a major label and released a promising third CD, the 2007 effort, “Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever,” the Cribs remained just one of any number of young British bands hoping its success in the United Kingdom would carry over to America.

But as Warner Bros. Records began preparing for the release last fall of the group’s new CD, “Ignore the Ignorant,” the label suddenly had an attention-getting angle for promoting the group.

Johnny Marr, the guitarist for the legendary British group the Smiths and most recently a member of the American group Modest Mouse, had joined the Cribs as a full-time member.

But Gary Jarman, bassist and one of the group’s chief songwriters, said he’s not sure Marr’s arrival has yet given the band any additional credibility.

“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” Jarman said. “Some people will be interested and other people are probably like very up in arms or offended by it. Like they think, ‘Yeah, they’re getting Johnny Marr in the band.’ It makes people naturally quite cynical.”

Perhaps some of that cynicism will fade once word gets out about the circumstances that brought such a respected guitarist into a relatively unknown band.

It’s not as if the band (which includes his brothers, singer/guitarist Ryan Jarman and drummer Ross Jarman) set out intending to actively recruit Marr, Jarman said.

A native of West Yorkshire in England, Jarman had recently moved to Portland, which is also home base for Modest Mouse. Things began in 2007 with a casual introduction.

“The drummer from Modest Mouse is one of my best friends, and he was one of the first people who invited me out to Portland in the first place,” Jarman said. “That’s when I met Johnny, through him. It was cool. Johnny told me how much he liked the Cribs, which was really cool for me. It stopped me from kind of nerding out, because we’re all big Smiths fans. It put me on like an even level, which was good. Because without that I could have been ‘Oh God, I’m such a big Smiths fan’ and made a fool out of myself.”

There was no plan, though, even as Jarman and Marr developed a close friendship, for anything more.

“We didn’t expect anything to come of it, so that was good enough for us,” said Jarman, who introduced his brothers to Marr at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival, when both Modest Mouse and the Cribs were on that bill.

That changed one evening when Ryan Jarman saw Marr at the Q Awards banquet and casually suggested they should try writing songs together. Marr, as it turned out, was all for the idea.

So in January 2008, Marr and the members of the Cribs got together at Moolah Rouge Studios in Manchester, England. That’s when the possibility of a more lasting collaboration took root.

“We wrote a lot of songs in the first weekend that we played together,” Gary Jarman said. “It’s always exciting as a musician to have that sort of, just like any sort of productive period like that. So we were pretty determined to try and hang on. It would have been a shame to have not continued at that point because we were excited about what we were doing.”

Of course, the whole Marr saga wouldn’t mean that much if it hadn’t produced results on a musical level. But “Ignore the Ignorant” suggests that the Cribs are a better band than ever with Marr on board.

The group’s spiky sounds are more developed now. The band rocks through such standout songs as “Cheat On Me” “We Were Aborted” and “Emasculate Me,” but also shows it can pull back on the energy and create pleasantly jangly tunes, such as “Last Year’s Snow” and “Hari Kari.” The songs throughout are full of catchy choruses and, with Marr’s help, expand notably on the group’s use of lead guitar lines as a key component. This adds a whole new level of color and melodic interest to the Cribs’ sound.

In a live setting, Jarman said, he relishes the new four-man lineup of the Cribs, and hearing how Marr’s playing is adding to the band’s sound.

“A lot of my favorite bands are three pieces. We were quite happy to keep it as that,” Jarman said. “We never saw it as being limiting whatsoever until we actually had someone else in the band.

“Now live it’s kind of much easier for us,” he said. “We feel like we don’t have to spend all our time just generating the energy between the three piece, because that’s what you spend a lot of your energy and time doing as a three piece. It’s much more liberating for us to have (four members). It allows us much more freedom.”