In most cases, growth and maturity are good things. For a sassy, punky, energetic rock outfit like Oxford Collapse, it’s not so clear-cut. Considering the disdain with which singer Michael Pace delivers the line “We’re so mature, memorizing words... I can’t believe we lost our cool” on the song “Young Love Delivers,” it seems a little insensitive for critics to call their most recent release, BITS, well, mature — but Pace sees things differently.

“I think it’s this idea of not resting on your laurels, not getting too comfortable with what you’re doing, not being afraid to try different things within your boundaries — knowing what you’re capable of and what you’re good at and pushing it a little further,” Pace says. “Growing as a band is just getting more comfortable with what you’re doing without getting trapped in a comfort zone.”

Nothing could be farther outside Pace’s comfort zone than the larger-than-life images of rock gods. In fact, it was just the opposite, the average-Joe musician, that grabbed his attention as a teen.

“I have a lot of cousins who are older than me,” says Pace. “I remember my cousin Charlie going into his bedroom; he had this Ozzy Osbourne Bark at the Moon poster. I thought it was terrifying. Then you get a band like Nirvana, just guys in jeans and T-shirts, coming around and you’re 13 years old and it’s like, ‘Wow, you don’t have to be this, you don’t have to look like this rock star to be awesome.’ It’s definitely very inspiring.

“I was a huge fan of Paul Simon in Graceland,” he continues. “Something about these guys that looked totally uncool making music, the guys with the short hair in the mid-’80s and dressed really smartly, that I was definitely attracted to. Then when I discovered punk rock and the esthetics of that, it all kinda came together. Paul Simon, Nirvana and punk rock.”

Those three influences pretty much sum up Oxford Collapse’s sound — maybe subtract grunge’s tense instability and add an indie-rock affection for wordplay and noisy crescendos. As they began sketching out their latest effort, the band set a goal for themselves: write 30 songs and release it as a double CD.

“Pretty much everything came out of just jamming in this disgusting practice space that we had on Grand Street in Brooklyn,” Pace says. “Rat feces all over the place. It was a dank basement and it was gross, but it was very inspiring.”

They did end up recording 30 songs, but the double CD didn’t happen. Instead, the band picked out the songs that would work best for a tighter, more approachable, snotty-yet-smart 13-track disc.

“We’re big proponents of the album as an art form, as opposed to putting together a bunch of songs, a bunch of singles and releasing it as a record,” says Pace. “As an album, you need a beginning, a middle and an end. You have songs that complement each other. You need to have sonic peaks and valleys — it can’t just be an album of two-minute-long punk songs, because that’s boring.”

How very... mature.