By Eliot Wilder / In "A Hard Day's Night," when asked if he's a mod or a rocker, Ringo, without missing a beat, drolly offers, "I'm a mocker." That same smart sense of pun informs the Mockers, whose second album, "Living in the Holland Tunnel," is a mania of Beatle-isms.

Led by Seth Gordon and Tony Leventhal - the former fond of sweet melodies and the latter keen on coruscating rockers (just like you-know-who) - the Mockers are not only part of the grand power pop tradition, but with their imaginative arrangements, amped-up guitars, ultra-catchy hooks and super-sharp lyrics, they also transcend it.

Just like their heroes the Nurk Twins, Seth and Tony are friends from childhood, having met after the Gordon family moved from New York to Spain to escape the rat race, and Seth attended a school owned by Leventhal's parents. The two boys quickly bonded, mostly because of their shared fanaticism for music. "Tony and I were in the same class together," Gordon says, "and we would spend our afternoons at each other's houses listening to Beatles records and stuff like 'Groovy Greats and Happening Hits,' which had bubblegum hits from the late '60s."

Gordon, who began taking piano lessons at age 5, eventually picked up the guitar, and Leventhal sorted out the bass, but the band didn't ultimately come together until after a bit of finagling and cajoling on Seth's part. "I kept pushing Tony, who at the time was attending college in France, and he was like, 'yeah, yeah,' and finally I scared him. I said, 'Oh, I met a bass player the other day.' At that point he realized it was time to take the plunge."

The Mockers, which also features Dean Howell on lead guitar and Jon Niefeld on drums, got their start playing in clubs in Virginia (Gordon still resides in Norfolk while Leventhal lives large in New York) during the heyday of '80s pop, a time when bands like the dBs, the Long Ryders and Guadalcanal Diary colored the musical landscape. There's a nice symmetry, then, to Mitch Easter, whose much-loved Let's Active was also among the rocking retinue of those early days, having a heavy hand in the production of the Mockers' "Holland Tunnel." Talking with Gordon, it's obvious he's somewhat in awe of the legendary producer of such classic albums as R.E.M.'s "Murmur" and the Velvet Crush's "Teenage Symphonies to God." "In addition to his skills as an arranger and his amazing collection of vintage gear," Gordon says, "the thing that's great about Mitch is that I could tell him, 'Hey, I'm looking for this kind of sound' - and within minutes he's got just the right microphones set up and exact guitar and amp you need."

On the new album the band also worked with producer Brad Jones, whose penchant for subverting straightforward songs with eccentric sonic touches (just listen to his twistedly brilliant work on Cotton Mather's "Kon Tiki") was exactly what Gordon and Leventhal were seeking. "It worked out great with Brad," Seth says, "because Tony and I are always looking for other people's ideas that can make a song better or cooler or different. Brad took our stuff to a whole new level."

Apart from all the attractive aural tampering on "Holland Tunnel," what stands out most about the Mockers, and what stands them apart, is the band's intelligent songwriting. Certainly, the lyrics - often filled with clever couplets like, "Vodka and Fanta / will come back to haunt ya" - are anything but your typical pop fluff. Gordon has a penchant for inventive, and sometimes invective, turns of phrase, thanks in no small part to one of his chief influences, Elvis Costello.

"I remember being in junior high school," Gordon says, "and listening to Armed Forces and thinking, wow, this guy knows how to write lyrics." Curiously, the former angry young man was not the only inspiration on young Seth. "The other big influence on me was, as strange as it sounds, Mad magazine. It definitely warped me from an early age!"

Still going strong after all these years, the Mockers are finding continued success, thanks in no small part to the wonders of the Internet. "It blows my mind that people can go to our Web site, listen to MP3s, type in their credit card numbers, and a couple of days later they've got our CD in their hands." With fans from as far away as Spain and Sweden putting their names on what Gordon calls his ever-expanding "pop friendly" list, it appears as if the world is ready for a little ... Mockermania.