Category Archives: Artist Spotlight

Yesterday is today: The Bings, Popsicko, and The Knack

11 Tuesday Apr 2023

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Seems closets and filing cabinets are spilling out great lost albums every other week, if you can believe the stream of releases that have come out recently. Steve Rosenbaum and Bruce Moody’s great collections of their respective lost recordings from the 1980s come to mind. Now you can add today’s featured performers to those acts that could have been but never were. But hey, they’re here now.

LA’s The Bings were working the west-coast American music scene pretty hard back in the early 1980s but apparently couldn’t get the time of day from Capitol Records. Listening to their unreleased 1981 album Power Pop Planet all I can think is: epic A&R fail. The whole thing is highly listenable poppy fun, sometimes revving a Beach Boys-on-amphetamines atmosphere or breaking out into a classic new wave guitars-everywhere style. “Please Please Please” opens the record with a solid Paul Collins feel. “Oh No” follows in a similar vein, updating a sixties beat group sound by roughing things up a bit. “Go Bye Bye” is another retro reworking, almost bubblegum in its intensity with a Jan and Dean vocal demeanor. “Billboard on the Highway” is also a retro-ish tune, giving off early 1960s tragic-rock vibes. But The Bings are not limited to updating the sonic past on this album. Departures abound, like the mellow “There She Goes” and solid rocking “She’s Got the Power.” And the band really ace that early 1980s new wave sound on a number of cuts. Just check out the killer Cars-like guitar-attack undergirding “Don’t Stop Dancing” or the hook-laden “Hold On.” My vote for sleeper hit goes to “Close Your Eyes” with its innovative lead guitar work. Though I’m pretty seduced by the subtle jangle touches animating “Snowbound in our Town,” a style that would define later acts like Fire Town.  Power Pop Planet sounds pleasantly old and totally timeless, depending on where you drop the needle. Here’s a find I’m really glad got found.

The Popsicko story is right out of rock and roll central casting. A hardscrabble band of party hearty-iers manage to get a record out and start climbing the indie charts, only to fracture amid drug problems and the untimely death of the group’s leading light. I won’t dwell on the details – others have written up the equivalent of a screenplay treatment – but the surprise coda to the story is a quality re-release of band’s 1995 album Off to a Bad Start. As I hit play the record practically lunges from the turntable with opening cut “Nastassja.” It’s a full-on rock and roll aural assault, going right for the party jugular. Comparisons to Cheap Trick really make sense here and on a host of other tracks on the LP like “Distrust” and “I Don’t Need You.” The vocal/guitar swagger also reminds of more recent work from The Lund Brothers. But the record does shift gears a few times, vibing The Replacements on cuts like “Some Mother’s Son” and single-worthy “Back It Up.” Elsewhere the needle points to a muscular REM feel on “Hard To Tell” or even a bit of The Plimsouls with “Dragging Me Down.” Popsicko are clearly a band of the 1990s, whether in a dirty pop rawk style (“Same Old Me”) or something more smoothly commercial (“Starless”). The record even includes an eerie yet prescient acknowledgement of the band’s soon-to-be fate on the Big Star-ish “No Better Time” when they sing the lyric ‘If we knew the end was near there would be no better time.’ This one still sounds like a hit to me.

Is it ‘bait and switch’ to offer up early-to-mid 1970s demos from Doug Fieger and Burton Averre as The Knack? You won’t need much of a listen to give up such concerns, the duo are so clearly the real thing in embryo. It’s like Prescott and Gary just stepped out for a ciggie. Rock & Roll Is Good for You: The Fieger/Averre Demos is a collection of pretty polished tunes – 16 in all, some with just guitar and vocals while others sound like a small combo. The distinctive Knack sound is definitely all over these tracks and not just the ones that would end up on Get the Knack. Of course, the early version of “Good Girls Don’t” and “That’s What the Little Girls Do” are pretty riveting, with an intensity and charm all their own. But the other 14 cuts here reveal a performative polish and song-writing strength that undermine the usual ‘one hit wonder’ insults that dog the band’s reputation. Stylistically the duo riff on a number of 1970s styles, a bit of funk, boogie rock, even some folkie affectations appear here and there. But what we also hear is how the Beatles touches on those early Knack records were no marketing fluke, such influences were baked in. Both “Corporation Shuffle (Daddy Turns the Volume Down)” and “Little Lies” abound with Beatlesque guitar riffs and melodic turns of phrases. Meanwhile shades of the distinctive bassy guitar work that would define “My Sharona” can be heard on “Have a Heart.” For Knack fans this record is no mere money grab – it clearly adds to the band’s stature and is highly listenable to boot. And for band super-fans, even more pre-Knack product is on the way with the imminent release of two albums from Fieger’s early band Sky.

In today’s instant and connected world, everything old is new again. You can make yesterday today by checking out worthy new releases of decades-old stuff.

An end to Gregory Pepper’s problems

07 Friday Apr 2023

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Curio pop songster Gregory Pepper has declared his brand new seventh album will be his last. No Thanks is dubbed a funeral march full of “brooding resentment and alienation bubbling below the sprightly melodies.” That does pretty much capture the tension that makes Pepper’s creative genius so alluring. His wild imagination runs to a kind of irony-deficient version of They Might be Giants while his messages seem to invert Jack Kerouac (‘that road just leads to disappointment!’). On this new release his tunes are routinely delightful, full of whimsy and striking instrumental adornments. And, as usual, the lyrics are dark, walking a fine line between sarcasm and sincerity. If No Thanks really is the swan songs of Gregory Pepper and his Problems then the vehicle is definitely going out on a high note.

The album opens with the deceptively buoyant “No Friends.” Here you have the Pepper formula – start simple and sparse but build out from there, in this case adding Quinn Martin whistly synth lines and a chorus of voices that eventually cascade into a Beach Boys big finish. “I Just Called to Say I Hate You” opens with a riff that sounds like a variation on Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good” but with added menace. “True Crimes” has a Kirsty MacColl’s “They Don’t Know” pop simplicity going on. Pepper seldom repeats himself but “Dadda” was a stand-alone single from 2019 that reappears here. It is an expert capture of the ennui of aging. “Never Have Never Will” sounds like slow motion Fountains of Wayne. I could go on, separating the madcap (“I Shit on Your Grave”) from the brooding (“Bad City Bus Ride”), but you really have to feel your way through this emotional no-fun fair for yourself. I will single out “I Miss Drugs” as the should-be hit-single. It’s a brilliant melange of styles, stitched together with a McCartney-doing-medleys sleight-of-hand. As we head for the exits Pepper lobs one final accusatory missive with the sombre, quiet “You’ll Pay.” But how? With an end to Gregory Pepper and his Problems releases? That seems an exceedingly high price.

Maybe No Thanks is a just a rumination on this particular moment and our anti-hero will rise again, perhaps in some new musical form? It is Good Friday after all. You can say ‘yes please’ to No Thanks at Camp Pepper or Fake Four Records Inc.

Heatseeker single: Taking Meds “Memory Lane”

03 Monday Apr 2023

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I distinctly remember when Billboard magazine introduced the ‘heatseeker’ designation on their Hot 100 singles chart in the 1980s. Initially it just indicated a song that was moving quickly up the chart but later it would be used to single out new artists or those that hadn’t charted before. Well today’s debut heatseeker single on Poprock Record is new to me and this blog. New York’s Taking Meds have come a long way from their screamcore roots with their new power pop single “Memory Lane.” As frontperson Skylar Sarkis remarked in a recent interview, “We wanted to write big choruses and big leads because that’s what we want to hear right now.” Well they don’t get much bigger than this. The song practically launches into the hook stratosphere right out of the gate. It’s like equal parts Swervedriver, Weezer and Matthew Sweet all battling it out to define what’s going on. But, ultimately, the chorus provides the heat here: it’s relentless, driving, and oh-so hooky. As I return to start with this group album-wise you can really see how they got to where they are now. An unerring knack for melody was always present but often more than a bit buried in the mix. It was certainly coming to the fore on their recent long-player, 2021’s Terrible News from Wonderful Men. But that album had nothing quite like this single. A full album of “Memory Lane” rocking pop goodness? Really. Can’t. Wait.

Memory Lane

Check out Taking Meds via their back-catalogue at their Bandcamp page and, like me, get caught up on what you’ve been missing. You won’t need a prescription.

Cover Me! Big Star “Thirteen”

11 Saturday Mar 2023

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The magic of music can be its ability to capture the emotional intensity of a particular moment or conjure up long gone, almost forgotten feelings out of thin air. For many of us, music can carry a lot of emotional freight and today’s featured track is a stark, striking example of that power. No song captures the tender, fragile, wildly aching love of the early teen-age years quite like Big Star’s “Thirteen.” The song’s lyrics are so innocent and emotionally transparent, the singer so vulnerable and seemingly ripe for heartbreak. Wes Anderson’s cinematic illustration of the song’s themes in Moonrise Kingdom really captures the innocence of “Thirteen” and looks fabulous, even if it shirks a bit on the vulnerability angle.

Despite growing up in the 1970s I don’t think I heard Big Star’s “Thirteen” until the 1990s. Their catalogue and reputation was a bit too hipster to fall across my more AM radio radar. But when I heard it I was immediately transported back to Grade 8 and that desperate feeling I had in the pit of my stomach most of the time, crushing on nearly every boy I met but unable to tell anyone. Seems like everybody’s got a similar ‘hearing “Thirteen” for the first time’ heartbreak story. It’s a song with impact. Which makes covering it more than a bit tricky. Some say, why bother? I’d say it can be done but it takes a special kind of ear and restraint to hear just how to do it without surrendering the song’s performative beauty. Everything But the Girl recorded a fairly straightforward version in 1991 for their Acoustic album but it didn’t make the cut, only coming out on the expanded version in 2013. It’s bracing and simple and a little emotionally distant, so EBTG in other words. Who is surprised that Elliott Smith could pull off a pretty impressive cover? This version was recorded in 1996 but only released with the Thumbsucker soundtrack in 2004. Smith has a vocal delivery seemingly built just for this song.

Everything But the Girl

There are actually a lot of “Thirteen” covers, most emerging post-2000, but most suffer some serious missteps. People try to bend the song into a new shape, thus losing the charm, or seem to think they can just slouch their way through a slow-dirge, finger-picking bit of shoe-gaze. Big Star make their slow pitch on the song look easy but it is hard to sound so profound without overdoing it. Rachel Gordon strikes a nice balance with guitar and piano and a vocal that avoids over-statement. Rome, Italy’s Lone Horn is one of those rare efforts that manages to speed the tempo of the song without dropping its emotional ballast. The interesting vocal harmonies and snappy lead guitar work definitely help. Chris Richards and the Subtractions do the opposite, slowing things down and breaking out different elements while still holding the song’s unique tension together. Joshua Speers takes Big Star’s original acoustic guitar starting point but then uses that to spread out in different directions, adding complementary electric guitar, vocal effects and a Beatles-in-Abbey Road blend of background as things go on. The result is careful, understated, and ultimately complementary to the tune.

Rachel Gordon

Last up, a bit of a departure, Toronto’s Choir Choir Choir lead a cast of amateur singers in a touching, almost all voice rendition of “Thirteen.” I’m not crying, you’re crying.

“Thirteen” transcription image courtesy Jerry’s Guitar Bar.

It’s Ryan time again: Ed Ryan and Ryan Allen

07 Tuesday Mar 2023

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It’s a special ‘Ryan’ only blog post, dedicated to new musical offerings from people with that name. Luckily we have two great examples handy.

Ed Ryan tells us the aim of his new record A Big Life “was to make a big, fun rock record!” Well he’s succeeded and then some. From the rollicking opener “Settle Down” with its rhythm guitar shots and 1980s J. Geils synth lines to a closer that reworks Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” into a rock and roll dance stomper, this record hits all the party marks. It’s like he’s taking us through all the many musical eras he’s lived through since the 1970s, adding his own distinctive Ryan-esque filter to everything. We go from what sound like 1970s guitars on “Take Away Everything” to a 1980s guitar vibe on “The Dreaming Moon.” “Wonder” is a lovely number that melds acoustic guitar and organ in a very 1970s Stonesy way. “Mary Anne” exudes what we used to call AOR (album-oriented rock) in the 1980s, where big crashing guitar chords and screaming solos ride a solid melody. Title track “A Big Life” also goes guitar-big but really delivers a subtle hook in the chorus. Then there’s the post-pub rock-styled “You Keep Me Up All Night” with its “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)” feel. But if I had to single out tracks for extensive radio play they would be “Lighthouse” and “Testify.” “Lighthouse” combines jangle guitar with a jaunty tune that skips merrily along while “Testify” just sounds like the single to me.

On his latest LP The Last Rock Band Ryan Allen cooks up a concept album that explores the classic ‘Is rock dead?’ fixation of rock and roll players via a disjointed band biography. With song titles like “Start a Band,” “Like the Ramones,” and “The Last Rock and Roll Band” you can see where this is going, narrative-wise. And listening through the album it’s clear the lyrics here are smart. But concept albums really live or die by the music. Happily these tracks rock, in the very best way. As usual, the range of styles Allen pulls out is impressive. “The Last Rock Band” sounds like an edgy Bryan Adams, “Discovery” is laden with guitar windmills borrowed from The Who, while “Stop the Train” has a delicious reverby pop sound reminiscent of Fountains of Wayne. Going more for the 1970s “Second Act” has those big seventies Thin Lizzy guitars or you can enjoy something that sounds like Bowie meets Big Star on “We Have Returned.” “Bought a Computer” is that part of the story where the protagonist briefly abandons his guitar for technology but all I can hear here is some spot-on Chris Collingwood kind of lyrical phrasing. “Wrong Place Wrong Time” is just a great intense rocker. Saving the best for last Allen wraps the album with the obvious should-be hit single “Because I Have To,” a nonstop hook machine of a song. Rock may not dominate popular culture like it once did but Ryan Allen’s latest long-player proves it’s not quite on life support yet.

People named Ryan sometimes make great music. Like these guys. Press ‘Ryan’ as your hotlink choice to find out more.

The mysterious jangle of The Plus 4

03 Friday Mar 2023

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I haven’t heard much about The Plus 4 but the music they’ve released so far is really speaking to me. The band kicked off 2023 with the aptly-dubbed “Resolution (Happy New Year),” a vampy glam strutter with a touch of 1970s Kinks in the vocals.  The song has a got a shambolic party vibe but don’t be fooled, that’s just a stylistic covering. This baby is one solid 45. Then barely one month later the band released another real smash single, the janglicious “You Look Right Through Me.” This one has a got a Beatles “Should Have Known Better” ambience, with an extra helping of Byrdsian trebly guitar. The more I listen to this track the more I want to listen to it. I mean, those ‘sha la la’s are exquisite. This month witnessed another singles instalment, this time taking things in a different direction. Sure, the jangle is still there, but the source material is a curious choice, a cover of Toyah’s “It’s a Mystery.” Now to be honest, going back and listening to the original version this is not a song I would normally give the time of day. But The Plus 4 take this thing off life support and literally breathe new life into it. You can hear the melody and the hooks that were buried in the original’s early-1980s bombastic production and instrumentation. The song now sparkles, all bright guitar lines, airy vocals and delightful shots of atmospheric harmonica.

Resolution (Happy New Year)
You Look Right Through Me
It’s a Mystery

The Plus 4 manage to sound so familiar and yet something new at the same time. Clearly I’m digging this new breed. I just hope it’s not going to take another 7 months to fill out a 10 track album.

For now, you can check out the jangle mystery of The Plus 4 at their Bandcamp page here.

Singles slalom with Ski Lift

19 Sunday Feb 2023

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Just five tracks, that’s all you get from Ski Lift on their debut EP Singles. The band is just one of many side projects for Welsh sometime folkie Benji Trantor, joined here by Ailsa Tully and Jovis Lane. Things get started with the 2019 release of single “Comfortable Here,” a mellow bit of pleasing guitar pop. Then the four other songs emerge sporadically throughout 2021, culminating in the EP’s release halfway though 2022. First up “Portal,” a track that gets the band’s engine running a bit faster and adds some fine vocal harmony detailing. Just two months later there a distinctive change in sound on “Moaning Again,” all fun experimental keyboards and poppy hooks. “Teenager” has a spare airy electric guitar feel, so like the poppy confectionary from Kevine Devine and *repeat repeat. “I Wanna Be You” wraps up the band’s singles run with a sometimes punchy, sometimes low key singalong. All in all, these five songs are fresh and buoyant and cool, thus the skiing imagery no doubt.

These five ‘fresh tracks’ (to use the ski lingo) are the band’s only tracks so far, as far as I can tell. Will there be more? Even if this is it I’d still say it’s a pretty good run.

You get on the Ski Lift here.

Lennon versus McCartney

30 Monday Jan 2023

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Fans have long been divided on just who they love more, Lennon or McCartney. Smart versus lovable, political versus sentimental, rocky versus hooky – these are the classic (and somewhat misleading) lines of division drawn between a duo who arguably comprise the greatest song-writing team of all time. Such judgements also face another challenge: in the Beatles John and Paul wrote songs together but also apart despite sharing a co-writing credit on everything, making it hard sometimes to sort out who wrote what. To make an effective comparison you really have to turn to their solo work in the 1970s to establish what each could do beyond the influence of each other and the Beatles’ unique group dynamic. Now the point here isn’t to say who is better because that is obviously completely subjective. You can’t debate taste. What I propose to do is compare their solo work to the Beatles material and ask ourselves which one, John or Paul, more consistently met that standard, a standard defined by commercially innovative singles and highly listenable albums that contained little filler. Get ready for contention! I’m fairly certain my choices and observations will spark debate but hey, that’s half the fun of writing a blog. Please do join in with your own take on this classic, endless, ultimately irresolvable dispute.

Let’s start with singles. Personally, I think John’s got a leg up here and that is saying something considering what a hit single machine Paul has been as a solo artist. Don’t get me wrong, both John and Paul have crafted some amazing singles. My measure is, who has continued the commercial innovation that we associate with the Beatles the most as a solo artist? Here I think John has the advantage with songs like “Instant Karma,” “Imagine,” “Mind Games,” and “#9 Dream.” Each one exhibits the kind of musical creativity and ‘pushing of the pop song envelope’ that I associate with the Beatles work. I could imagine any one of them appearing on a 1970s Beatles album, if such a thing had come to pass. I’m not saying every John single was a winner. Paul certainly has a few Beatles-worthy singles moments as a solo artist – songs like “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Band on the Run” – but they don’t branch out much from similar previous efforts with the band. I would grant that “Jet” and “Live and Let Die” met the Beatles innovation standard. Stepping away from singles for a moment, both John and Paul have got a few really special deep cuts on their 1970s solo albums, like John’s “Jealous Guy” from Imagine and Paul’s “Magneto and Titanium Man” from Venus and Mars.

What about albums? Rock critics tend to rate a few of John’s albums as the best solo work from a former Beatle, particularly Plastic Ono Band and Imagine. I’ve got to disagree. In terms of total listenability and an absence of weak cuts the hands-down winner is Paul’s Band on the Run. The difference in opinion here comes down to how much credence you give the ‘cool’ factor. Critics loved John over Paul because they saw him as serious, deep, and political. It was all part of the conversion of the music press from cheer-leading, teeny-bopper coverage to more serious journalism in the late sixties and early 1970s. And hey, if you like that sort of thing, cool. But the Beatles were not some underground indie band, judged by how ‘cool’ they were. They were a commercial juggernaut whose music was accessible to anyone with ears. Plastic Ono Band and Imagine are great albums but they’re not up to Beatles standards, in my view. Not all the songs are equally strong or accessible. This became only more pronounced on John’s later albums where he tended to feature one outstanding single amid a bevy of weaker material. In the case of Some Time in New York City there wasn’t even a decent single. By contrast, Band on the Run has no filler. All the songs are either great or very good. It’s the closest any ex-Beatle came to putting out something comparable to a Beatles album IMHO. And, just to throw in a really controversial claim, I think John’s most Beatles-worthy album is actually Double Fantasy because it’s the only one where all the songs are actually pretty good, even the Yoko tracks. And I’m not saying that McCartney’s albums were uniformly good either. Indeed, they too mostly suffered from a surfeit of rather second rank tunes cast amidst the hits.

Well there you have it, I rate John as the solo Beatle with the most commercially-innovative, Beatles-worthy singles and Paul as producing the album that comes closest to reproducing the Beatles trade-mark listenability. Controversial views, I know. Now whether you agree with these judgements or not, I do think there are some patterns here that are undeniable. Clearly, looking at his solo work, John just wasn’t an album man. Self-admittedly somewhat lazy, John was good for bringing in three or four really great tunes to every Beatles album session. His friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) competitiveness with Paul heightened his productivity within the group. But as a solo artist John lacked the drive to fill annual albums with top-quality Lennon material. By contrast, Paul could crank out tunes and albums with a Beatlesque eye to overall listenability and commercial success. But as a solo artist Paul never worked with anyone that challenged him the way John did and that limited his innovative creativity compared to his Beatles-era work. Compare that to John, collaborating with the likes of David Bowie and Elton John and getting some pretty impressive results (e.g. the Lennon/Bowie co-write “Fame”), and you get a glimmer of what might have been possible.

Pitting John against Paul was never gonna produce any clearcut ‘winner.’ Even their somewhat less Beatlesy solo work still contained some pretty stellar stuff from both. And, in the end, you don’t have to choose or play favourites. You can love them both. I know I do.

Top photo by Tom Murray from the Beatles ‘mad day out’ 1968.

Poprock self-starter kit: Orchidales and Where Is Your Dog Now?

15 Sunday Jan 2023

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The DIY force is strong with these two acts, conjuring band albums out of largely solo efforts recorded on Tascams at home. But the results are anything but amateur, proving that bedrooms are good for a variety of excitements.

North Carolina’s Orchidales is John O’Donahue over three albums released between 2012 and 2018. The sound is a shoegazey Velvet Underground homage that gets crisper and less gazey and VU over time. The self-titled debut sounds like some dark underground club somewhere, the guitar tones shifting between Velvets rocking rudimentary (“Junky”) and exquisite innovation (“Lushes”). “Everyone’s Girl” sounds like a 60s garage classic. The sound on this record also remind me Patrick Boutwell’s work from the same time period. A year later things sound a bit less VU on An American Album of Familiar Music but still pretty garagey rough and ready. I love the relentless drive of tracks like “Electro,” “Seventeen” and “Emily.” But the record is also marked by some more mid-temp material like “No Name #7” and “Above the Clouds.” Five years passed before Mysterious Skin and Other Favorites came out in 2018 and the production sound was markedly different, cleaner and with vocals more present in the mix. Just listen to the guitar and vocal seem to pop out of the speakers on “Mysterious Skin.” Or there’s the fabulously layered arrangement of “Mira Sorvino // Lisa Kudrow.” “No Name #9” strips everything down to acoustic guitar and a vocal to reveal something so magnificent and honest. But 60s garagey goodness still prevails here in strength on tracks like “Nightcrawler” and “The DEA Took My Baby Away.” Too many years have passed since this last installment of O’Donahue’s fuzzy musical vision.

Andrew Haworth writes a lot songs. He’s put out 9 albums under his own name and two more as his one-man band Where Is Your Dog Now? since 2017. And that’s not the whole of it. By his own account he dramatically overwrites for each album. He wrote 114 songs for 2020’s Songs from the Second Wave and 130 for 2021’s Country Songs for People Who Hate This Country. Holy over-productivity Batman – both records only ended up with 14 cuts each. So what are the results? His nine solo records are full of clever wordplay and fun absurdity, delivered with a Frank Zappa-like deadpan. But his more recent Where Is Your Dog Now? releases have a fuller sound, the hooks are more polished, delivered with an almost McCartney-esque sonic diversity. Hard to believe these are home recordings! The lyrics are still super-smart, cleverisms around every corner, but the tunes are earworm worthy. Case in point from Songs from the Second Wave: “How to Not Go Insane.” So many subtle shifts of hooky melody here. I’m also partial to the driving “Some Things Never Change” and handclap happy “Rewriting Your Narrative.” A year later Country Songs for People Who Hate This Country continued in the same vein, still madcap lyrically and musically full of popped out rock. You could sample the vibe with tracks like “Coffee Table Crooks” and “Claire’s Ween Playlist” but, frankly, just needle-dropping anywhere would work too. “New York Intellectual” reminds me of Momus’s “A Maoist Intellectual” not because they sound similar but because they exude a similar righteous disdain for pseudo-intellectuals. Should-be hit single? Check out “A Little Invested” for your earworm winner. Haworth is busy at work on album #3 for this project, to be entitled The First Songs in the World, and with four preview singles up it’s clear it’s gonna be another winner. My current fave is “Cave” and its cleverly crafted video.

Most of us learn by example. Looking to self-start your own DIY poprock recording career? You won’t get much better teachers than these two indefatigable acts. Click on the links to start your lessons today.

Record round-up III

31 Saturday Dec 2022

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This is it, round three of our year-end record round-up, our final one for the year. And it is definitely a strong finish. If round one was rocking and round two was retro then round three is a tad more out there and experimental. But oh-so listenable.

Everyone Stop is *repeat repeat’s sprawling new 27-cut double-plus album. Just released at year’s end, you can enjoy it as an uninterrupted 91 minute experience or skip all over its many different contributions, needle-dropping your way through its musical depths. With so much material here the record lacks the laser-like stylistic focus of the band’s magisterial 2019 release Glazed. But the expanse gives them a chance to hang out in so many different sonic playrooms. The results are a rocking good-time funk dancing acoustic emotional ballad roller coaster. You’re gonna need to hang on tight to hang in here. The first three cuts are a good introduction to the textured genius of this band: “Everyone Stop,” “Dearly Departed,” and “Arrangements” hit you with such cool guitar tones, a solid dance bass/drum combo, and airy-light vocals. The whole album could have just stayed in this lane. But suddenly “Adult Friend Finder” flips the script, taking us into alt-folk territory not unlike the likes of You Won’t and Bombadil. Just looking for earworms? Let’s cut to the hits chase: “Hmm Feels Like,” “Diamonds,” and “Tripping (I Know I Will)” are all should-be hit singles. What hooks! What sonic artistry! There’s so much to love here and I can only scrape the surface of what the band accomplish on this LP. Right now I’ll just draw attention to the wistful “I Was Happy” which lays its dreamy pop over a musical bed that sounds so Portugal the Man. Or there’s my today-fave cut (it may change tomorrow) “Burn Another Layer.” My recommendation: you’re going to need to set aside some time to fall in love with Everyone Stop. But you will.

I fell hard for The Stroppies killer 2019 single “First Time Favourites” with its harpsichordian keyboard riffs and folk rock vocals. So my first hit of their new album Levity was more than a bit jarring. But I loved it. What an interesting shift of musical emphasis from this band on this record, to a more daring, somewhat techno-experimental sound laid over solid rock and roll tunes. You can feel the creative tension of this mixture rippling throughout opening cut “The Perfect Crime,” with the guitar and keyboard parts pulling in different directions. Then “Smilers Strange Politely” floats a pleasant melody over a relentless guitar riff that gets seared into your consciousness. The record is really all about letting the electric lead guitar drive the songs – songs like “Up To My Elbows,” “I’m In the Water” and “Figure Eights” all let the guitar work cut loose in exciting ways. And yet there’s still a folk rock feel to so many tracks here, like “Material Conditions” and “Butchering the Punchline.” Seriously, Levity is a great new direction from a very good band.

Philadelphia’s 2nd Grade always give a little bit more. 2020’s Hit to Hit had 24 songs. 2021’s Wish You Were Here Tour Revisited had 23. Now in 2022 they’ve scaled back – to 16 cuts. But new LP Easy Listening does not skimp on quality. This is one fine crew of melodic tunes, accent on poppy. Opening cut “Cover of the Rolling Stone” hits all the classic powerpop marks, vibing Mo Troper pretty strongly for me. But then “Strung Out On You” throws some 70s rock jauntiness into the mix. “Hung Up” is all 1980s guitar pop. “Me and My Blue Angels” works in a few more minor chords while “Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Let It Be” lets a big room rumble guitar fill the space in another otherwise airy lowkey number. For variety check out the Stones rhythmic slouch all over “Poet in Residence” or the bubblegum Ramones feel to “Beat of the Drum.” This record is like some K-tel super hits collection, there’s so much diversity here (and I’m not even half through the album). Personal faves: “Teenage Overpopulation” and “Hands Down” – such exhibit A perfect poprock singles. “Planetarium” is pretty sweet too. Easy Listening is not just truth in advertising, it’s 100% fun.

I feel like I’ve been trying to write about The Rubs all year. Ever since I ran across their Stonesy “I Want You” last March and found their album (dust) in August it’s been on the shortlist. But for one reason or another the record didn’t fit into this to that post. Not for lack of trying. So now let me say, this album is phenomenal piece of work. It’s like a great lost record from the 1979 to 1982 period, it so nails the guitars and poppy rock and roll songwriting and sound of the records in that era. Songwriter and one-man band Joey Rubbish (not his real name?) takes a host of classic rock motifs and pops them up, front-loading some great melodies. Opening cut “I Want You” is an attention grabber, so classic rock and roll but those candy coated vocals make it irresistible. But then things shift with “Dana” and its kooky fun spacey keyboards. From there variety comes in many forms, from the folk rock “Here In My Dreams” to the keyboard punchy “I Don’t Wanna Wait” to Thin Lizzy-ish “Hang On To Me.” Rubbish so nails the everyman rock and roll vocals of the late 1970s on tracks like “Waste of Time” or the propulsive Plimsouls guitar drive on tunes like “The Same Thing to Me.” But my vote for outstanding track here is “When I Dream About You,” a genuine poprock tour-de-force. What a majestic melody! Don’t waste time, just place (dust) directly into your ‘best of the year’ pile.

NYC’s Cherry Slide are a slice of acoustic guitar pop, dropped from the Family of the Year mold. It’s all strummy strummy strummy against a wash of harmony vocals. Except when it’s not. “Not Fair” captures the basic sound: acoustic guitar front and centre, light and airy vocals, all in the service of a poppy tune. “I Took a Number” adds some variation to this with its nice lead guitar accents. But then we have “Generate This!” It’s a wonderful single that just cooks along, riding a strong acoustic rhythm guitar and dropping in bits of electric guitar amid a captivating mix of vocals. Picked straight from the ‘hits’ tree. The band also offer up a souped-up cover His Name Is Alive’s rather spare “Wall of Speed” adding a soft-rock Spector Wall of Sound effect. Moving north Halifax Nova Scotia’s Municipality also ride the lowkey guitar pop train, sounding a bit more Elephant 6 though. On their debut Sunroom they really do sound sometimes like Apples in Stereo just popped into the Beatles Let It Be sessions. “First and Last” and “Let It Go” have really got that late period Abbey Road feel. But the material itself is more 90s indie poprock e.g. there’s a bit of Elliot Smith on “Without You.” On the other hand, “All in My Mind” sounds like the single to me with its hooky guitar shots.
It’s been an odyssey, getting through this end-of-the-year record round-up. But so worth it – so many great acts, so many great tunes. And dropped in just in time for 2022.

Photo fragment of 57 Chevy ad courtesy James Vaughn.