Offer From Godfathers

Peter Coyne doesn’t like it when people zero in on the gangster connotations of the name of his band, the Godfathers--”a rock ‘n’ roll offer you can’t refuse” and all that.

“We never threaten people,” Coyne said, insisting that the band name is a connection to his Catholic upbringing. “I always thought of a godfather as someone who looked after religious needs. We look after musical needs.”

But as he sat in an office at Epic Records’ Century City headquarters recently, a glen plaid sport coat over a white turtleneck and a cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger, it was easy to picture him as a character in an English crime movie, leaning forward in his chair as he calmly yet persuasively reminds you of an outstanding debt in a measured South London working-class accent.

The debt he wanted to discuss, though, was the debt he and his fellow Godfathers--which includes his brother Chris--feel England has rung up against its citizens in recent times.

“It’s the result of 10 years of Thatcher,” the 30-year-old singer said, explaining the dire tenor of some of the Godfathers’ songs. “If you have a government that doesn’t care for the people, how can people care?”

That grim assessment was at the core of last year’s “Birth, School, Work, Death” album, a collection highlighted by the seething title cut, which recalled in outlook and musical inclination the likes of the Kinks, the Who and the Jam. (The quintet’s be-suited look also brings to mind the natty Mod connections of those bands.)

It’s also a large part of the new album, “More Songs About Love and Hate.” But as the title implies--cynically ironic as it may sound--the Godfathers worked on a wider emotional canvas this time.

“It’s good to say things positive for a change,” Coyne said. “Someone wrote that ‘Birth, School, Work, Death’ was the ultimate in nihilism. We wanted to show we’re more than that. And if we came out with so-called political material all the time we’d bore people.”