In the “funny because it’s true” department, Elias singer-guitarist Brian Healy gets big laughs when he announces that “Coldplay are, like, the new Phil Collins.”

Healy, along with guitarist Rob Tornroos, is sitting down with the Straight to talk about All We Want, the band’s just-released debut. As the hipsters of Mount Pleasant pass by the window of the café, the frontman adds an unexpected twist to his earlier assertion: “But that’s okay. Because we love Phil Collins, and we love Coldplay.”

He’s not kidding or being ironic. Healy reveres both acts, and indeed hints that they are an influence on the songwriting of Elias. Most groups will drop a wacky influence or two in their bio, but Phil Collins? Logic dictates that that’s not cool even as a joke.

This isn’t the only way in which Elias stands out. In a city whose music scene demands eclecticism, where the antiestablishment is the establishment, the group is making music that’s straightforward, radio-friendly, and irony-free.

“We don’t fit in,” Tornroos jokes when asked about Elias’s place in the local music community.

“Yep. We’re outsiders,” adds Healy, whose younger brother Jonny plays bass in the band, which also includes Dominic Coletta on drums. “But I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. We wanted to make an album that was more polished, nice-sounding, and with accessible songs that could be on the radio.”

All We Want is just as Healy describes. From the opening (and title) track to the closer, “Whale Watching”, the album is filled with shiny guitar parts, pretty vocals, and lyrics that reflect on love and loss. Calling to mind such bands as the Fray and Snow Patrol, Elias’s music betrays its members’ ages: they are children who came of age at the tail end of the Britpop era, when Radiohead was still an accessible rock band and so-called “indie rock” groups like Travis and, yes, Coldplay hadn’t yet revealed themselves to be purveyors of adult contemporary.

“I got a lot of flack in high school for being the only kid who listened to Britpop,” Tornroos says. “Blur, Suede, Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker, the Manic Street Preachers, Oasis. All of that stuff.”

“A lot of the oldies come into it too,” says Healy. “Tom Petty, Phil Collins, Pink Floyd. Phil Collins is something that we also listen to now. Face Value, No Jacket Required—those are the two best ones.”¦It’s just wicked sounding—the production is great. It’s full-on cheese, but you kind of get sucked into it. At least he’s laying it straight out.”

Both Tornroos and Healy talk with such reverence that it’s hard not to get swept along by their logic.

“ ”˜Take Me Home’ is a really good song!” Tornroos says. “He has some really good breakup songs.”

That last jab is in response to questions about whether All We Want is a breakup record. Lyrically, it’s littered with references to lost love, bitterness, and heartache.

“I don’t really see it that way,” Healy says. “But yeah, I guess there were breakups going on during this record.”

“ ”˜Last Disaster’, I guess, is about a breakup,” Tornroos admits with a mock pout. “I wrote it on Valentine’s Day. After a breakup.”

The two laugh it off, but hardly shy away from an association with sentiment.

“I heard an interview, I think, with one of the members of Coldplay,” says Healy, “where he said there was a new genre called ”˜nu sensitive music’. I think we’re in that same vein. It’s emotional, but it’s still alt-rock. It’s still sensitive and ballad-y and pretty.”

If the Phil Collins love isn’t shocking, the willingness of the band members to admit to liking such a horrid-sounding genre certainly is. Indeed, the naiveté of Healy, 28, and Tornroos, 25, is more unnerving than any attitude a band could adopt. Open, without posturing, and still seemingly wide-eyed about fame and the music industry, the group makes for a refreshing break from Vancouver’s status quo.

“A lot of these bands that are living in the Commercial Drive area,” Healy says, without guile, “they dress kinda rough, and they’re just playing pop, but just because they dress like that people think they’re bad-ass. They’re cool ’cause they have beards.”

Tornroos deadpans, “Should I grow a beard?”

In the end, Elias doesn’t seem to care whether or not the music it makes is Pitchfork-approved.

“We’re trying to do something different,” Tornroos says, “but also to reiterate things that are universal, and connect with people.”

“I wanted to avoid saying that we’re all about love or whatever,” says Healy, finally. “But underlying in our music, there’s hope.”

Elias plays the Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival in Whistler on Sunday (April 13) and the Railway Club next Thursday (April 17).