Pillow talk

Adam Goldman, the frontman of pop quartet the Bedroom Walls, told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 2003 that he ''just wanted to make people sad." That year, the Walls, then a larger collective, had recorded a full-length debut album called ''I Saw You Coming Back to Me," received heavy airtime on West Coast indie stations, and spent their remaining hours spreading the gospel of ''Romanticore," the band's original brand of navel-gazing pop.

For the Walls, who play the T.T. the Bear's Place on Tuesday, everything and nothing has changed.

''I am still the guy who doesn't understand why Squeeze didn't make it," Goldman says by phone from LA, where the band was preparing to tour in support of its new disc, ''All Good Dreamers Pass This Way."

''On that first album, we were very concentrated on trying to get that sustained feeling from the music. The emotional part is still a constant."

What's new is the subtly self-effacing tone on ''All Good Dreamers," which moves from minimalist, fuzzy pop to woozy, string-filled ballads. The album has a familiar melancholic undercurrent -- the dramatics, the preening of a Smiths-era Morrissey. But ''Dreamers" was produced by Fiery Furnaces veteran Rafter Roberts, whom Goldman credits with attempting to add a ''super-indie, super-rough-and-ready aesthetic to the studio [sessions]."

''So I met him halfway," Goldman says. ''He wouldn't let me stress about stupid [expletive], but I did want the bigger, orchestrated sounds to come through."

Last year, Goldman began working to rearrange the Walls logistically: The band was pared down to vocalist Melissa Thorne, and former Boston musicians and Tufts grads Donna Coppola and Jeff Kwong. A change in the Walls' musical direction soon followed.

''I liked the single-mood feeling of the album, but in a lot of ways, I was eager to get out of that," Goldman says. ''What I've always liked in a record was bleakness, yes, but a sense of humor, too. In the darkness, you crack a joke. That's how people live."

''The material has been given a new life," says Coppola, who used to play with Boston favorite Papas Fritas. ''The band's smaller, and the music naturally changes. Each song is given a new essence."

The most striking addition to ''All Good Dreamers" is its cohesive and fleshy narrative, which ''I Saw You Coming Back to Me" lacked. ''Dreamers" is a bigger album from a smaller band: It has the space to tell a dozen stories, from the lovelorn ''Mandy" to the suburban angst of ''Hello, Mrs. Jones." On the string-heavy second half of the album -- especially the stirring progression of ''Somewhere in Newhall" -- Goldman's arrangements evoke the best of ''Coming Back to Me," without sounding quite as self-indulgent or slushy.

Paula Kelley, a Boston-bred singer who moved to LA in 2004, remembers that once the Walls had ''established that sound, that sound that you can really feel in some of the songs, they could go back and really work on the songs."

Kelley, who initially met Coppola in the cozy East Coast pop scene, has followed the band since its conception.

''What they began to do with strings was so simple, but beautiful," she says. ''The arrangements drew attention to themselves in a very subtle way."

The Bedroom Walls debuted this new sound -- in four-piece configuration -- under the harsh lights of the South by Southwest Music Festival in March. It was a trial by fire.

''We'd just rigorously prepared all the arrangements, really worked on this stripped-down feeling," he said. ''But we needed to have it out there in this big way."

The release of ''All Good Dreamers Pass This Way," on Baria Records, coincides with the Cambridge show -- only the second time the Walls have played in Boston, and the first with the new lineup. Both Kwong and Coppola say their homecoming of sorts inspires both anxiety and relief.

''The biggest difference between the cities is that in LA everyone's trying to make it," Coppola says. ''You can finally make a living at indie rock. So bands are more competitive. Boston has such a warm music community. I'm looking forward to that."

The Bedroom Walls play T.T. the Bear’s Place on Tuesday. Tickets are $7. Call 617-492-2327 or visit www.ttthebears.com.