It's a kind of Catch 22, a rock 'n' roll cliché: the fans love the first record and the band loves the latest. Guster and its fans definitely fuel that formulaic feud.

"It totally is a cliché," says Guster singer/guitarist Ryan Miller. "But sometimes the artist is right." Yeah sure, but Miller's in the band, so he concedes a little. "Maybe it's not for me to say objectively."

But the Guster debate, where the difference between what it is and what it was, is perhaps a little more dynamic. Over its 15-year history the band has moved from an acoustic guitar and hand-drum outfit starting with the 1994 release "Parachute" to a full-blown rock band that generates substantial atmosphere and color. That's evident on the band's recently produced fifth disc, "Ganging Up On The Sun."

All five albums are important pages in the book of Guster, but with "Ganging Up" it's perhaps a little more evident where the band was heading all along. No band really wants to be stuck in first gear forever. "Ganging Up On The Sun" is the work of a relevant, credible, maturing band. Guster has gone from a caffeinated earthiness to a borderline epic tableau.

"I think the songwriting is almost from another band," Miller says. "If there's any sort of through line maybe it's a sense of melody that permeates. We've always been a melodic band. To be honest, one of the biggest differences between our first record and our fifth record is just where we drew our influences from. [Back then] I don't think I'd ever listened to ‘Astral Weeks' or heard a Marvin Gaye record or The Velvet Underground."

And with all members writing, the band never leans toward just any one influence. Guster's originality shadows its touchstones.

"We've never been accused of being derivative," Miller says. "We've been accused of tons of things and that's not one of them."

Guster formed in Boston in 1992 while Miller, guitarist/vocalist Adam Gardner, and percussionist Brian Rosenworcel attended Tufts University. The band's humor and heavy touring along the East Coast earned Guster a legion of fans. Its first release, though independent, sold more than 40, 000 copies. People dug the band. And of course, there were those melodies.

The tunes found on early discs were pleasant and sturdy. They sounded fine with the band's abbreviated line-up. Nothing was lacking. But a band needs to grow, experiment, think out of bounds. Miller refers to that quality as the band's fearlessness.

"Musically, not emotionally," he says. "I don't know what there was to fear before necessarily. I just think it was the willingness to experiment. The first half of our career was defined by mad percussion playing and really strummy acoustic guitars. The producer on our third record, Steve Lillywhite, was insistent that we make a record with no hi-hat and things like that. After that record we really sort of tore the whole instrumentation apart and really tried to approach the songwriting using drum kit and bass and keyboards." Multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia was brought into the group.

When held up to one another, the band's early compositions and the new stuff aren't all that different. Their treatment may be, but the songs remain the same.

"We're a song-based band," says Miller. "A lot of these songs work with just acoustic guitar and voice. At that point you just find the skeleton of the song and hang the rest of the instrumentation around it."

Adding the aural flesh with all its dimensions and layers to the music can pose logistical problems when shifting from studio to stage - but then again, so does playing it as a bare-bones trio.

"We used to have a much bigger problem with that," says Miller. "We didn't even have a bass player or a kick drummer. We pulled it off back then. It wasn't an Eagles concert where you're hoping to re-create every note live. We've always been a live band, so it wasn't, ‘How are we going to make this work?' It was, ‘How are we gonna make this have energy?'"

One highlight of "Ganging Up On The Sun" is the cut "Ruby Falls," a gorgeous seven-minute opus with a three-minute trumpet outro that sounds like the ghost of Chet Baker in Yellowstone National Park. This is something the band would never have considered a few albums back, before the fearlessness, where some fans wish they remained. Miller says positive feedback has emboldened the band to keep going further.

"There's definitely been a vocal minority of fans that think our first and second records were our best," Miller says. "And they're wrong."

Guster

Palestra, Wilson Commons, University of Rochester

Friday, October 5

8 p.m. | $25-$27 | 275-2121