Today’s breaking news includes a few real newsmakers of one sort or another and others who should be. Stay tuned for all the hooky details.

When heartland rock reunited with more commercial pop sensibilities in the 1980s acts like Tom Petty and Heartbreakers, Greg Kihn Band and Bruce Springsteen stormed the charts. On their new album John Larson and the Silver Fields harken back to this golden age to my ears. Constellation Prize has the easygoing live rock chops of that era, sweetened with honey-dewed melodies and hooks. “Don’t Look Too Fast” is a great album opener, holding organ, piano and guitar in a dynamic tension while spinning out a cinematic sweep of heartland imagery. “Guilty By Association” puts its guitar riff at the centre of its rock and roll celebrations. “Everything’s Easy Until You Try It” reshapes an Orbison-esque guitar hook to drape a very Tom Petty romp. Then comes the should-be hit single for me, “Learning To Love.” The song rides an unstoppable guitar riff with a relentless drive. From there the album starts to vary its tempo and aural attack. “Start With Your Heart” offers up a bit of lighter AM radio-friendly pop fare while both “I Don’t Wanna Go Back” and “Fly Away” work that ominous 1980s pop vibe, delicately balancing dark and light melodic notes. And then there’s “Margot’s Gone Dancing,” a very different kind of poprock sound more akin to mid-period XTC. This just may be my favourite song from an album with a lot to like.

Melbourne, Australia’s Peter Freebairn seems like a stately gent. The tunes on his new album Silhouettes & Cigarettes exude class and an ‘I’m not in any hurry’ air. Opening cut “World You Choose” eases us into the album with a subtle hook that just keeps tightening its grip. “Say Goodbye” sounds like something we might expect from Paul Carrack, dialing up the blue-eyed soul and some sweet organ. Then “You And I” shifts gears to a more solo Paul McCartney vibe. What comes next sounds like some great lost 1970s Hall and Oates chart hit. “Crazy Love” has all the alchemy of that decade’s melange of styles: a bit of stylized pop soul, a disco guitar figure, and an aching pop melody that stretches on and on. Both “Home Town” and “Silhouette” are slower numbers but in decidedly different registers, one Don Henley California low-key, the other John Lennon sublime. But strap yourself in for this album’s closer because it defies everything you’ve heard so far. “I Got Lucky (I Got You)” is a strut rocker rooted in an uber cool riff that resolves into a rapturously melodic chorus, ornamented with theremin and a host of seductive background vocals. Hit anyone? This is it.

We’re not even half way through the year but it would appear that a lot of power pop scribes have already chosen their album of year. And who can blame them? The Lemon Twigs’ fifth album A Dream Is All We Know is breathtaking in its variety and command of 1960s and 1970s poprock styles. The record constantly shifts focus, from sixties English pop to California beach harmonies to 1970s commercial chart hits, but is clearly the work of one very talented band. Opening song and early release single “My Golden Years” sets the stage for what is to come. The track has the sonic dexterity of 10cc with perhaps a Queen-esque penchant for sharp melodic turns and a distinctly yearning vocals style. Sixties influences abound throughout the album with Beach Boys harmonies on “In the Eyes of a Girl” or The Byrds meet The Cyrkle on “If You And I Are Not Wise.” There’s also a very stylized English sixties pop sound coming off “Sweet Vibration” and “Church Bells.” But America gets a look in too with the more 1970s derived cuts like the Andrew Gold-ish “A Dream Is All We Know” and the keyboard-driven, Partridge Family-worthy “They Don’t Know How to Fall in Place.” The brothers behind this band have really got an ear for particular moments in pop music history. Just listen to how “How Can I Love Her More” captures the early 1970s over-the-top commercial pop, full of horns and strings and seeming vocal cast of thousands. And we’re not even done exploring how creative this band is. There’s still jazzy samba (“Ember Days”), Argy Bargy era Squeeze (Permanent Roses), and early solo McCartney (“I Should’ve Known Right From the Start”) to take stock of. And who would have predicted an album exit that hits the glam pedal hard like “Rock On (Over and Over)”?  This is band worthy of the often overused attribute ‘a sensation’.

Sometimes it’s hard to switch horses midstream. Joe Scarborough has put out an amazing power pop EP entitled Big Star but you’d never know from the press. Crickets. Well that’s probably because Joe is not just any ordinary Joe lunchbox but the Joe Scarborough of US Congressional and right-wing talk radio and TV fame. And he’s not just any high profile politico but has been a pretty hard-right libertarian Republican figure for decades, though he does appear to have exited the party at the Trump station more recently. Still, it’s hard for many to square rock and roll’s typically progressive elan with fiscal conservatism. Not that Scarborough would be the first to straddle rock and roll and the political right, it’s just that artists like Eric Carmen from the Raspberries were often associated with right-wing politics much later in their careers. But hey, what about the music? On the whole it’s pretty damn good. This EP has a grinding Well Wishers hooky edge in its title track while “Contract With Bulgaria” has lyrics you might expect from this point of view. Still eminently hummable. The cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” really gives the song some power pop oomph. This EP leans into the horn section but earlier EPs like Welcome to the Monkey House and Freaks Love Freaks draw on Costello-like turns of phrase and melody and a Matthew Sweet pop sibilance. Just goes to show, you don’t have to agree with somebody to dig their tunes.

Working hard to bring you the power pop headlines, that’s our mission. With all these great tunes, who needs film at 11?

Photo courtesy Thomas Hawk Flikr collection.