WHO: Rainer Maria.
WHAT: Rock.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., Manhattan; (212) 260-4700 or boweryballroom.com.
HOW MUCH: $15

Caithlin De Marrais kept dreaming the world was ending.

Maybe it was her disappointment with the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. Maybe she was still getting used to Brooklyn after all those years living in the Midwest. Maybe it was just nerves.

But the recurrent apocalyptic nightmares were unusual for the frontwoman of indie rock trio Rainer Maria. De Marrais prides herself on being able to see the sun behind the storm clouds.

"I try to see if maybe there is even a funny side to it," said De Marrais, a vibrant redhead with family roots in Bogota. "I try to turn around even the darkest moments into something positive."

Something wonderful eventually did come out of De Marrais' nightmares -- "Catastrophe," the title track to the band's fifth record, "Catastrophe Keeps Us Together." Since the album's release last month on Grunion Records, it has been hailed by critics as the 11-year-old band's best record yet.

And with good reason.

The songs are upbeat, with hooks driven by De Marrais' strong yet vulnerable voice. (Her voice is comparable to that of REM's Michael Stipe, with the added femininity of Butterfly Boucher or a less-folksy version of Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis).

In a departure from the group's previous albums, De Marrais does all the singing on this album, freeing up guitarist Kyle Fischer to concentrate on his instrument.

And Fischer is apparently content in his new role.

"He and I decided at some point a few years ago that we felt happiest when I was singing and he was playing," De Marrais said, adding that Fischer has begun building his own guitar effects and pedals. "We always joke that Kyle sings with his guitar now because he has become such a complex guitarist."

Another change for this album is the band has finally dropped the "emo" classification.

Aside from the subject matter of the songs -- which, like most songs, deal with relationships, loss, change and mortality -- the band has little in common with emo groups such as My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.

But then, De Marrais said, it never really did.

The emo label began attaching itself to the group shortly after it formed at the University of Wisconsin in 1995. The relationship subject matter might have given rise to the classification, or perhaps the romantic nostalgia of naming a band after a dead German poet.

De Marrais thinks the label had more to do with the other college bands on the bills Rainer Maria played.

"When we started, to be honest, I had never heard of the term emo," De Marrais said. "But there were a collection of Midwest bands that were kind of my peers at the time that were called emo. So, when the tag was first put on us, I thought, 'Well, if they are calling these other bands that are my friends emo, then I'm OK to be a part of it.'

"But we have such different musical tastes. ... I don't like the tag dogging us for this long."

After a decade of playing music, the band has little dogging it now.

It has weathered a few trials that could have been catastrophic -- a long break without recording, the lack of a label and the end of a romantic relationship between De Marrais and Fischer. (De Marrais said she and her band mates are now like siblings.)

And their music feels more fresh and alive despite, or perhaps because of, their history.

"I am always throwing out questions in songs that I don't have the answers to," De Marrais said. "And a lot of the songs are now leading me to find answers.

"How better to calm my fears that we are headed for disaster?"

E-mail: holahan@northjersey.com