If you’re a Boston band playing pop music, it seems that one of the best ways to attract broader recognition is to head West. Unlikely as it may seem, a number of New England’s finest have made good over the past decade by settling down in Los Angeles, either temporarily or on a long-term basis. It’s the pure pop artists who seem to flourish rather than the louder bands. Transplanted hard-rockers Half-Cocked didn’t make a big splash in LA, and neither have the highly touted punk band Heidi. But there’s a long list of popsters who’ve made good. Lemonheads and Buffalo Tom both made breakthrough albums — It’s a Shame About Ray and Big Red Letter Day, respectively — in Los Angeles with LA producers. Aimee Mann arguably did her best work as a Bostonian, but she didn’t become a critic’s darling until she went West. Mann’s one-time partner, Jon Brion, could barely get arrested when he led the Boston band World’s Fair, but he’s now a star producer and cult-hero solo artist in LA. Kay Hanley still lives in town, but a trip to California gave her a big breakthrough with the Josie & the Pussycats soundtrack. Hanley’s former bandmate, Stacy Jones, has been threatening to score a mainstream breakthrough with his LA-based band, American Hi-Fi. And the Cavedogs created a storm when they played their first reunion show in Hollywood — two-thirds of the band now live there.

More recently, a move to California has given a new lease on life to Gigolo Aunts and Velvet Crush, two bands who went through their career ups and downs when they were based in Boston. Both sound rejuvenated on their latest releases, Gigolo Aunts with Pacific Ocean Blues (which has just been released by the local Q Division label) and Velvet Crush with Soft Sounds (Action/Parasol). Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the mood of both albums is considerably less angst-ridden than the bands have been in the past, particularly the Gigolo Aunts set, on which the once moody quartet sound jangly and sunny.

"It’s snowing in Boston?" asks Aunts singer/guitarist Dave Gibbs over the phone from his West Hollywood apartment. "Well, I’m here on a gorgeous, 82-degree afternoon. Sorry ’bout that, dude." The weather is one reason Gibbs’s world view has brightened. Another is his recent success doing songs for film and TV soundtracks: along with Aunts bassist Steve Hurley, he’s written songs for Felicity, Alias, and an American Eagle Outfitters commercial. Gibbs also had a hand in writing some of the songs Hanley sang in the Josie & the Pussycats movie. And a song of his has been accepted for a forthcoming Hollywood remake of Peter Pan.

"It’s pretty funny," he notes, "when you first pick up a guitar, you think you’re going to set the world on fire. You don’t think, ‘I’m gonna wind up writing a song to satisfy a guy 15 years younger than me, who’s a low-level peon at Disney, telling me to write a song with the word "fight" in it.’ It does pay the rent, though. And it may not be as artistic, but it’s definitely satisfying in a different way. If it’s the pop guys who are doing well out here, I’d say it’s because that’s who concentrated on learning about songwriting. The metal guys can shred like crazy, but if you can write songs, then you can still have a career after you’re done rocking out."

The band were in disarray around the time they left Boston, having come through not one but two major-label deals. They were on RCA in the early ’90s but got dropped after one album; later they released Major Themes & Minor Chords on a short-lived label run by long-time friend Adam Duritz of Counting Crows. Duritz also lent them his studio for the new album, which was recorded strictly for fun when all four members (Gibbs, Hurley, guitarist John Skibic, and drummer Fred Eltringham) were in town. And California references are everywhere: the disc’s title was borrowed from Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, and Gibbs says its 45-minute length is exactly the time it takes to drive from his apartment to Venice Beach.

"We made exactly the record we would have hated when we were kids — a West Coast singer-songwriter album," Gibbs admits. "It didn’t even start as a record; it started as Steve and I getting together and saying, ‘Let’s have a few beers, you play your songs and I’ll play mine.’ Next thing John’s around, he hears it and says, ‘You need more guitars in there.’ Then Fred came around for the hell of it, and we were set."

The band quietly hit town (with a stand-in drummer) for a First Night show recently, but that was their first US date in four years and the last they have planned. The members are now busy doing other projects (Skibic plays with Juliana Hatfield, Eltringham with Ben Kweller), so it’s more a group of friends than a full-time band. Gibbs also has a solo project, Kid Lightning, that he plays the local clubs with. "We never made any decision to move the band out here — after the Minor Chords tour, we still loved each other a ton, but everybody was also in the mood to get away from everybody else. Now that things are smoother, I feel like it’s simple: I can either hang out with my friends in the freezing cold or I can do it out here."

IT’S NO WONDER that Velvet Crush were in a hurry to get out of Providence, where they lived during their brief major-label tenure. I’d pick their one Epic/Creation release, Teenage Symphonies to God (1993), as the best local power-pop album of its era, even with heavy competition from Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield, Lemonheads, and Letters to Cleo. But whereas all those bands got some national recognition and big headline shows, Velvet Crush could barely fill clubs, even with cult heroes Tommy Keene and Mitch Easter as part-time members.

"We were a little bummed that we could never build the big local momentum," drummer Ric Menck explains. "The real lure of Los Angeles for me was the possibility of session work, and that you can play with more people because things are constantly happening. There was a lot that I loved about living in Providence. I liked hanging out at In Your Ear Records and poking through the stacks for hours. But in New England you’re fighting the elements a lot more, and there aren’t a lot of musical possibilities outside of being in a band. I wasn’t interested in playing the same clubs up and down the East Coast anymore — we’d played ’em so many times that it just wasn’t interesting."

The band split town five years ago, with their line-up pared down to Menck and singer/bassist/guitarist Paul Chastain (guitarist Jeffrey Underhill, who’d just become a father, opted to stay behind). Chastain is now back in his old home town of Champaign, Illinois, but Menck went to LA and flourished. In addition to his ongoing gig in Matthew Sweet’s band, he snagged a 1998 tour with Liz Phair, her last to date. He joined Gigolo Aunts for a Spanish tour last year, then went back to Europe in Marianne Faithfull’s band but left before she hit America, saying, "Her personality was just too intense for me." He now runs the Action Musik label, which puts out Velvet Crush records along with choice reissues. Last year he reissued a cult classic of ’60s psychedelia, the Action’s Rolled Gold, and he’s planning to expand into books and DVDs.

The irony is, now that Velvet Crush aren’t a full-time career for either member, they’ve become been more prolific than ever. Along with a handful of reissues, there have been two new albums since the LA move: 1999’s Free Expression and last October’s largely acoustic Soft Sounds, both of which tone down the brittle guitars of the band’s Northeast period in favor of a classic, California-style pop sound. Soft Sounds even includes a Fleetwood Mac cover. Menck and Chastain are now holed up in Illinois making two new albums, one a fully produced Velvet Crush disc (with ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett guesting), the other an experimental side project. And they’re planning to tour for the first time since the mid ’90s.

"Hey, there’s no reason not to do this until it’s literally impossible to do so," Menck points out. "Paul and I have been playing together for 17 years. That’s a long time. I don’t know if I’d say we’re underappreciated. To me it feels just about right. I never wanted to be big — the whole idea of being rich and famous is repulsive to me. The economy’s crappy, and people are suffering, but you’re less affected when you live on the fringes. I thought making books and DVDs would be impossible to do, but it doesn’t even cost that much."

The idea of Menck as a star sideman and entrepreneur will seem only a little strange if you remember his persona from Velvet Crush shows. He was always the band’s loose cannon, the one who’d disrupt sets by coming down from the drum riser and expounding at will. "It’s true," he laughs. "I totally crushed whatever crazy persona I had then. Maybe it was time to grow up and get more serious. But now I get to hang out with my friends and create things with them, and that’s the payoff."