Morgan Phalen answers his mobile phone with the sound of a busy bar or nightclub in the background. The songwriter and singer for New York's swaggering and exciting Diamond Nights is not having a quiet night in.

"Is it that time already?" Phalen yells. "I was just hitting on a girl."

I offer to hold on while he continues with his work. It may be instructive to pick up some hints on technique.

"I don't have any technique. I'm just trying to ride this whole kind of rock'n'roll musician thing as far as I can take it. It's true, you become much more attractive when you are a musician."

It's only fair really that Phalen and his band get to live out some of the rock'n'roll fantasies given that their debut album, Popsicle, sounds like five of your favourite rock'n'roll bands moved into the same household. You've got your hard rock, your power pop, your glam, your New Wave and your slightly weird '80s rock in 12 songs.

"We're not a focused band: we're kind of like a group of people who have overdosed on Ritalin," Phalen says.

"But I think humanity is like that and I think the whole next wave of music listeningship - I'm going to develop this new term, listeningship - is going to be very scattered because it's all based on iPods. It's not anything new; people used to do that with singles. The best period of music for me was the singles era, where all that mattered was that you made a beautiful song."

The girl from earlier returns, asking if Phalen wants another drink, but he shooshes her with a quasi-dramatic

"I'm talking to Australia" .

Maybe it's something he picked up from a new celebrity friend.

"A few nights ago I took drugs with Steven Adler, the original drummer from Guns N'Roses," Phalen says.

They spent the night looking at old photos of Adler's band, chortling over the appalling fashion choices of Axl Rose. Phalen has a sneaking admiration for Rose's style or lack thereof.

"I live in New York now and I think in New York you're always tied in some fashion. I think Axl Rose was always successfully a hick, that white trashy guy, and he always pulled it off well because he had an almost total no regard for fashion. We're a little more susceptible to trends."

Phalen has an odd background. He was born in San Francisco, spent most of his childhood in Mexico City and went to college in Boston. New York, San Francisco, Boston are rock cities, but what do you get in Mexico City?

"The culture has a real love of rock'n'roll, but it's classic rock'n'roll, so when I moved back to the States I hadn't heard any of the bands them were big at the time, like Nirvana, Soundgarden.

"In Mexico, the big bands were like Pink Floyd and the Cure and you'd get on a bus and they'd play Black Sabbath."

That could explain a lot.

Diamond nights  play Saturday, 9pm, Rebel Rebel, Home, Darling Harbour, 9266 0600, $31. New York's the Cloud Room and Hell City Glamours support