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Nerd rock is back. Actually, I don’t know if it was ever gone, or if it ever existed in the first place, but suffice to say it’s here now in the form of Chester French. Formed by two Harvard freshmen in 2003 and named for the American sculptor who built the Lincoln Memorial, the nerdyness extends not only to their roots, but also to the duo’s stage presence.  Take their recent show at Hollywood’s El Rey Theater, opening for Lady Sovereign, for instance. Front man D.A. Wallach bounds on stage in ill-fitting red trousers (you know, the kind of pants your grandma would suggest you wear on your first day school), a somewhat dingy white t-shirt and a mop of unruly strawberry blonde hair. Guitarist Maxwell Drummey is a skinny white kid with a backwards haircut, sunglasses that engulf his face and a skirt.

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At a time when the collapse of the music business has become a cliche and the major labels objects of derision, Chester French, a duo of Harvard grads whose names are neither Chester nor French, may well be the exception that proves the rule.

The two guys, Max and D.A., are one of those six-years-in-the-making overnight successes who turned their dorm-room obsession with mixtapes and pop music into a career the old-fashioned way: one fan at a time. In true Cinderella fashion, a few of those fans were famous, as in Kanye West, Jimmy Iovine and Pharrell, whose label, Star Trak, released their first album, Love the Future, on April 21.

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